An almost pain-free day. One test to pull together quickly and give out. Easily done in the two hours of space I had to be voting present anyway. The sun will rise at five twenty-seven tomorrow and I intend to be there, rested, in order to chop weed heads in the name of the evil one and still have time to do what I planned on, which was a simple milk run.

There was dark and light in the sky and on the ground.

The darkness was a guy in front of me in the line at the unsatisfactory breakfast place. He stared a little too long at me, no homo I think, but I said something guarded. He explained that he used to be tall like me before he got old. He was maybe twenty years ahead of me, and four or five inches shorter now.

Maybe it doesn’t happen to everyone.

I’m whistling through this dark. I guess five inches is better than dead? Which could also be the result, possibly even a more likely one.

And then I went in and pulled the test together and had plenty of time left over to visit a tree. A particular piñon. I do it often. In the unsettled cloudy weather it was as pretty as ever, but it got better. Never before had I seen this particular kind of tree being used with vigor for lunch by a hummingbird. Maybe no tree ever, but for sure not a piñon. But there it was, ten feet overhead, sipping at the needly fronds. For more than a minute and more than two.

It made my heart sing.