I paddled on a lake between nature and nurture between longing for rain and a mallard taking a sort of bath a turtle basking on a dry rock that had been submerged the moon was a waning wisp the Earth frowned upon our hope our mindless emitting of CO2 but life felt beautiful in the way a meadow or a beetle or a breeze is beautiful and I was hot and it was October and no rain and no rain and the lake water not cold and I thought about tomorrow and I saw a damselfly touchdown on a lily pad and a forest was burning on the west side of the Cascades what had been too wet not too wet to burn no longer a music of sodden moss and dripping ferns but the cries of sentient beings dry streambeds of deep-rooted thirst a closed road at milepost 45 a place called Wild Sky which had meant wilderness but now meant unmoist tree fuel which now meant the inability to see things like Mount Rainier Mount Baker the house up the street the bridge to the north the birds singing nothing the birds saying nothing shallow and muddy at the edge the winter migrants widgeons and mergansers not arriving the sunsets redder the sunrise a red ball of doom the big question which way is the wind blowing is it coming from the east from the north from the fires which anguish are we planting which walk to what kind of 2030 which shoulders are shrugging what kind of painful haze where are we and where are we going