Second Verse.

Hey: it goes like this: wake up, feed the baby, feed the baby, swaddle the baby, swaddle the baby, and then somehow it's four or five o'clock and time to look off to the north and west, where down out of the Wilkesboros three days running now comes the same bow of storms, something fancy with a good shield of rain behind it, the last two days arriving late afternoon and early evening. Three nights ago we caught it at one in the morning and it lit the tank farm on fire—friends and fans of weather, do not watch the local 2740X news, lest ye hear the phrase tank farm uttered again and again—but that wee-hours storm was just the opening ceremonies. Fancier for all the folks watching. These last two days we've been plainer, calmer, have looked like summer in the best sense: hang on through miserable heat and torment, and a little evening storm may arrive on one of your porches or the other. Tonight's was the best of the bunch, heavy and serious just enough off to our east and south to give us a kind of atmospheric air conditioning, followed by low thunder and soft rain for the better part of two hours. Perfect for the perennials I got in the ground out front of the writing shed pre-rain. This is what rings of exceptional accomplishment around here post-EJO: in addition to not killing the child, we got flowers in the ground. How the finish line shifts.

Flowers in the ground, and the floor not swept but cleared out there: I have this busted idea about finding forty minutes sometime tomorrow morning to look at one or two of all those paragraphs, to look at the first four pages of that new novel all about a dude not much wanting a kid. It takes place in Florida. My own story, about a dude not much wanting a kid and then kind of wanting a kid anyway, takes place in 2740X. That's the space between fiction and non. Oh, genre. Oh, holy hell.

It rains here. It's hot as overmicrowaved soup, but then it rains. Despair and then relief. Three days in a row.