Working, I forget to focus, think about a broken light and last night's dream. Someone's calling. I hear the phone's far-off ring, answer it mechanically as I've been trained with smiling voice and careful repetition of the facts, every piece confirmed and spelled and double-checked. And then, I stumble sleepily and pinch myself awake. It's cold in the early morning. I'm too easily tempted by drowsy, day-dreamed warmth.

Unconscious culture races from work to weekend and back. No time to think or ponder life. Instead, we swim with frantic strokes, focused on surviving each wave crest and sea swell. We strive for yachts and tropical island paradise, just beyond the horizon. Too many tire and sink when home's spurned shore is not so far behind. Why can't we see? We were meant to live on land.

Smokey glow of fog envelops sugar factory, blurs reality in darkened silence of almost-morning. Smokestacks poke through the mist, tower above fields of beets and a lone truck, headlights sputtering, engine fading as it drives away. Chill breezes promise new beginnings, make magical the simple scene of plain clay bricks and frozen earth viewed from a freeway overpass in winter.

The trash compacting truck comes to pick up garbage, Tuesdays. It's loud. I like to watch the gate compressing coffee cans, cardboard boxes, black bananas; loose fragments of the everyday crushed into manageable size and taken away. Real life's not so simple. I've tried condensing problems into smaller space, pushing down the thought that something's wrong, tuning out unwelcome words. It doesn't work because they thrive in harsh conditions.

Sometimes, I sit, staring at the fire, fail to notice time's passing. Manic tongues of flame lick away soft bark, melt marrow of severed limbs while I watch, astonished at soft speed, gentle rush of heat and light, so friendly. The power to kill's disarming, persuasive in its gift of warm camaraderie on a cold night. I must be wary.

I could spend so much time wondering what it means, a simple touch. Instead, I stood and walked away. I felt a soft, slow jolt, and yet, I disciplined my face to stoney forward stare and left.

Dark clouds foreshadow freezing rain. The firewood's stacked. I picked the ripe tomatoes, pricked wrist on rosebush, taking out the trash. Has winter come? Plush petunias nestled next to porch think it's just a passing phase. Two dandelions spread seedy fluff, decide it's better safe than sorry. As night's black mask descends, I peek once more from window and see my reflection.

Bills arrived today. Plastic windows crinkled as they fell through front door's mail slot. I placed the pile of envelopes on downstairs desk. It's work that's never done, this cycle of purchase and payment. Every month a new batch. I sat and slowly sifted through, postponed commencing, looking for a letter instead. No luck. It seems that only corporate correspondence counts. Every message commercialized for maximum return. What have we become?

A timid kitten hidden in the woodpile cries for milk. I fill a bowl, gently set it down outside the door. It seems so simple, yet he struggles, eyes me with suspicion while he drinks. I walk away, consider how our world became a place where gifts seem fraught with danger, generosity a liability. Full, the kitten runs toward the road and disappears. The young should have no need of fear.

Gasps of wind push clouds across the sky in a slow-motion race for blue hills on the horizon. Shadows pass over cottonwood tops and broken beams, rest on rusted scraps of tin. The roof is gone. The twisted pieces sprawl in the grass while a sprinkler clicks and clicks and clicks, always turning to the right. Autumn leaves leak green and soon, the snow will come.

A pad of paper, blank, waits for words, patient with my indecision. It sits, unthinkingly prepared for list or letter, sign or story, prose or poem. I stretch out pencil, praying for precision as it touches down and steps from line to line, linking thought with action, giving form to flights of fancy, setting down perceptions as soft drops of rain break on broken leaves outside my window.

Late at night, I listen to trains passing in the dark, each with its song of long lonely travel. Closed cars slip through empty intersections, lights flashing red in their wake. The almost-silent giants swim through black-shadowed city streets. Metal monsters of the deep surface under midnight's cloud-covered moon, and then, as dawn draws close, they disappear.

A frog outside my window jumps and knocks against the glass. I stare through screen, tempted to speak, wonder if a whisper's better suited, say nothing. He jumps again, and then, he slowly starts to climb; inserts his tiny legs in square wire mesh and pulls, straining for the top. He falls. He hits his head on window, jumps once more, then twice. Ten more times he tries. He stops and sits astride a leaf. He stares in silence as it rains.

I bought an ugly coat and wore it once with collar up. I walked the town with rain-resistant gloss reflecting porch lights, street lights, headlights, the light of a full moon. I searched the store front shadows, watched a stop sign on the job, jumped in dumpsters wondering where reason sleeps. Apparently, it has no nighttime hideout. It fades away at sunset, flees from strange, nocturnal superstition, waits for safety of daybreak.

Washing dishes, I find spaghetti-spotted bowl, spoon tipped with crust of jelly, shallow pool of milk in glass: corpses of last night's fast-finished feast. Suds spill over bowl and spoon and glass like snow at the start of winter covering all in soft, white simplicity. I break the bubbles, thrusting hands beneath. The dishes come to life, sing a tune of muffled chinks and clinks. Glass bumps bowl and spoon taps glass in clumsy, underwater dance. They cannot keep from making merry. This is new life.

Driving down the freeway, I take it slow. Fifty-five saves gas, gives time to savor fields of mint, fresh harvested. Others pass fast on left, craning necks, no smiles. Every face determined, set on forward motion. Some gesture, label me an obstacle to progress. Where are they going that requires such speed? I do not cause their stress. It is something within.