Waking up this morning, after 10 hours of sleep my neck is scrunched, immobile, and my temples ache. I am thoughtless. I look at the time: I awakened at 6:30 and thought about getting up, then passed out and the next thing I knew I'm here gaping at my watch, 9:38am.

I can barely walk.

I am flush with some kind of fever, my joints stiff.

It takes forever to think about the obvious: drink water make coffee eat something

I am tempted to return to sleep.

I go out on the porch to fetch the paper and, delighted by the cold air, and sit down on the wicker chair to read. With each of the graphic cages passing under my eyes I have increasing success decoding the news. Even so, it's all lines of difference. The world turned and little of import makes the news beyond the patterns of the everyday.

I finish the paper and return to the enclosed heat, then the water, ice for my neck, and blessed coffee. I listen to meadow birds with the parakeet and complain about the overcast skies, the tornadic and suffocating overcast skies.

Can anything of hope survive?

Two paper daffodils stretch against the house like buttery loudspeakers, trumpets of an obscene beauty.

Redemption.