A Plot Begins When Somebody Has Something

I Had Never Liked, Even Feared A Little, This Wild Reach Of Marsh And Mud Flats Where Everything Seemed Turned Away From The Land, Looking Off Desperately Toward The Horizon As If In Mute Search For A Sign Of Rescue.

Yes, This Is What I Thought Adulthood Would Be, A Kind Of Long Indian Summer, A State Of Tranquility, Of Calm Incuriousness, With Nothing Left Of The Barely Bearable Raw Immediacy Of Childhood, All The Things Solved That Had Puzzled Me When I Was Small, All Mysteries Settled, All Questions Answered, And The Moments Dripping Away, Unnoticed Almost, Drip By Golden Drip, Toward The Final, Almost Unnoticed, Quietus.

The First Thought That Occurred To Me, That Night When I Heard The Chairman Of The Jury Announce My Name, Was, Just Think How Many People Hate Me At This Moment. Naturally, I Wanted To Annoy Those People Even Further By Being Arrogant.

Enormous Morning, Ponderous, Meticulous; Gray Light Streaking Each Bare Branch, Each Single Twig, Along One Side, Making Another Tree, Of Glassy Veins.

And Indeed Nothing Had Happened, A Momentous Nothing, Just Another Of The Great World's Shrugs Of Indifference.