I WAS standing beneath a pleasant nine o'clock sun one morning in 1962. The pores on my skin were all alert, absorbing the ultraviolet. I was alone. But the sparrows were busy doing turns at perching in the yard. And from the trees at the side of the road, the shadows were also falling to touch the earth.

And what did these birds, the morning warmth, the shady trees, all mean? In those 1960s years I had forgotten about questions like that. W