The afternoon is gravid with cloud and I feel the swell of my knuckles in a damp room. It is Sunday again. I wonder how the wheel can spin so fast, and if I tried to slow it, whether the tread would bite my finger. Of course, the chore would be to set the sprocket to its proper speed in the morning, the blue in the office deepening practically into twilight. Who ever invented those banks of fluorescent ice, the linoleum shore?

And speaking of the belly of the air, my best friends are with child. I'm happy for them, but it is a book closing. The new one I'm reading seems terribly dull, the characters live in the city and work downtown. Where is the sea and the waves curling over pockets of darkness? Oh well, even poetry grows up. Put it away.

Which is not to say I dislike the cast of light in my room. It is almost content, that gray, to mingle with the yellow of the lamp. They are friends from different times, different towns, come to drink beer in my living room. It will be so festive until they both go home. I am a continent spreading out, touching at least two shores, my heartland rustling with corn.

And I do wonder, why is time like an accordion, making its most somber noise on its inward fold? It would probably be better for us if the seasons ran a straight line, summer and fall, winter and spring, and on to something new. It's hard to go around once a year, and my teeth ache. They have memories of tinfoil stuck to the bottoms of cakes.

But babies will come and babies grow. I'll pick out my clothes and turn off the light and listen to my neighbor's tv. A doctor is rushing through a hallway to save a young man's life, the whirl of lights above his head. How lovely, a nurse will say, looking at her reflection in the empty computer screen, but of course she means the music that suddenly fills the room.