Uncommonly fine day, I find myself in high spirits, and it's baffling but I'm loving it. Rough night last night at the end of a rough day, but it wasn't too bad at the end of it all, mad dash to the finish line but no one's in my box or in the stands. Watching the lady in green with a violin tucked under her chin, her countenance in ashen shadow, hard to read what she's thinking, it's disquieting. Floozy. Mute. Hushed, indistinct, then faintly audible, tranquil, then sleepy and now. Anna Carem or Astrud Gilberto, can't tell which it was, but she was singing a song so smooth they call it easy-listening, and I was lying there on a sand dune, shades, sun ablaze but no heat, a palm spring in the distance in my mind. Peel slowly and see. It's a pink banana, yikes, and there's some good songs in there. Three bears and a little drummer boy, one of 'em used to be his favorite, but it was the only one he didn't take when he left. Mimi, come, fetch, boboy, he says into the receiver. He's a keeper. He doesn't say bye to me, but waves to Pheebs, bye bye wo-wo. I ask him where my bye-bye is, and he says something, can't make out what, but he wiggles in my dad's arms and he laughs. And so the day is okay. Time lapses like a set of dominoes. in slow motion, they tumble over and over to the beat of Nina Simone crooning, crooning, because you're mine, bass, bass, and more bass. and they turn to ash, like banished vampyres on a tacky TV show. Smoke and mirrors, you never know. It's a golden honeyed trap. Goodnight, and good morning.