The crows are gathering in the olive tree next to the dead cypress to sing their lullabies again. Or else give praise to he (or she) who is watching Lawrence Welk with the sound off. Now they’re saying an elegy over the body of a dead mouse, each looking morally injured. All the windows are open and someone is playing Gershwin on a toy melodica. All the windows are open and someone is being beaten with an extension cord by one of their more esoteric doppelgängers. When the sun corkscrews behind one of those flimsy looking cardboard cut-outs of the moon everything goes porchlight quiet. A single crow cuts through what’s left of the sky and I pray that the bond between celestial and terrestrial has been permanently severed.

It emerged as a symbol at first—a cow skull on a snowy lawn. I smiled, though not at the juxtaposition. Who else puts limits on loveliness. I don’t know anything. I am a thoughtless know-nothing, a godless nobody—no more malignant then a rowboat in your everyday field of vision. When I got out of the car I spotted a rock covered in pink moss and knew that it was true—what they say about time. Cow skull and then rock covered in pink moss. First a loveless marathon of sex and then a sexless marathon of love. Intermittent or interstitial I take a razorblade to filmstrip. One frame and the next the third and then the fourth and so on into eternity or extremis or until the rays of light finally bleach this latent image uncomfortably white.