For years now a rusty scythe has been propped up by the door, in order to chop down the weeds crowding the street out front so that a car might be able to pass. One thing is for certain. Numbers don’t lie. They do not measure the future, but they measure time. And the ability to read off every single name of the yet unseen plants that are definitely supposed to sprout today, or otherwise flower, is because it is so noted on the sheet music carried under the arms, like the banker writing in the maturity date of a bill. It will probably take four years for the tree to grow and bear fruit.A fox passed freely through a flower bed in a token garden with no flowers or anything at all yet, and after imparting for a moment some pale colors, left, leaving a faint trace of itself. The only weapon there was patience. Not for weeding the field, but for other uses. Until the return of the birds and snakes that at one point ran and hid, and not only that but until that day when they happen to come very close and stare right this way, I sat motionless like a hunter, as if I was part of the rock upon which I sat. That was the only bird that ceaselessly chirped through day and night, wasn’t it.