Cottonwood trees, Thermopolis

Indian summer, the middle of Wyoming, a weekday. The park almost empty, the children in school and the grown-ups working. There's nothing to do but listen.

Listening, I hear everything on earth shift into place, including my own body and the body of my partner, the one I've grown up with.

There are two humans down below, just passing through. They'd taken the waters earlier and are drying themselves in the sun, lying on their backs in the long green grass of the park, trying to sleep but not sleeping.

One of them is beginning to believe in the future again, in the powers of praying for himself and others. The other listens as the freight train passed through Thermopolis, Wyoming, just outside of town.