[1] Signs along roads and pathways for fireworks, pet food, shoes, hair removal, hair grafting (persumably not from the same bodily location) highway exits, end times.

[2] A letter with news of a woman about to give birth to the music of shellfire. And if that infant lives, god willing, to be a woman herself, will she feel, I wonder, the muffled thuds of shells landing when her baby in turn kicks?

[3] A bird at the new feeder, first one I have seen, shy & tentative in the dusk-dark. A dove perhaps. A dove I hope it is.

[4] The compassionate one said, "With all your might and soul cotemplate the moment of your own death." Then perhaps, it will come, that for which we wait all our lives: a rain drop of uncorrupted love.