Summer Breeze.

June 4th. North Carolina. All the windows out here in the shed wide open, as they were all night, ceiling fan spinning, birds, breeze—and seventy degrees. At ten in the morning. Headed for the low eighties. And then Tuesday for the mid-seventies. And don't believe this yet, friends and fans of weather, but there is growing consensus among the fancies that one of these late-week days we won't make it out of the sixties. In North Carolina. In June. Here cometh the TLK winter, that which does not come every year, so-named for my friend TLK who would, when we were in grad school, stop his life with me on such days and ride through that gray June drizzle porchbound and slightly boozy. Ten years ago now. Nearly fifteen. Enough to talk about what the weather used to do back then. As opposed to now. And yet.

Let's not ruin it with talk, though. Focus on the tasks at hand: the end of the trim for the little building out here, caulking the seams, painting all the wood brightest white. And let's not mark as a harbinger the full mug of coffee I just elbowed onto the wall and down under the subfloor—probably that won't grow mold, and probably these final few mitered joints will match up sweet and pretty. Yesterday the Toad turned two. In dog years, that makes me half-dead. But I survived. We both did. We all did. The windows are open. In June. The church bell just now says ten. That greatest of luxuries: time to get to work.