Timing:

When things are sort of average, time just moseys along its predictable forward arrow. It's the extremes that make time rhyme and loop back upon itself. In this wet heat, I'm sweating away in my office, flogging the mouse and keyboard--but also, I'm burning my bare feet on the asphalt, slogging down the road in 1965 Indiana to get a fudgesicle and a Royal Crown Cola. And I'm drinking sweet iced tea in the sun on a back step in Towanda, Pennsylvania while my grandfather slaughters his younger male relations at the billiards table in the funky cool of his basement. And if there is a thunderstorm tonight, the long rumble will be the echoes of every storm I've watched boil up from the west, as I've rocked on a long succession of porch swings.

Who's catching fireflies
just to let them go again?
Which summer is this?