Summer hasn’t skedaddled, though the sun’s sliding lower each day and come evening we’re all ready for bed. The drought is back. The loess here is concrete. I planted my usual fall perennials but the water sits on top, reluctant to sink. It lifts to the sky, carries east. I imagine how they’ll grow in next June, but like every year, they’ll grow where they wish.

Pray for goldenrod, switchgrass, echinacea.

The drinks aren’t working anymore and neither is the coffee. My drug of choice is energy; I’m working on a project called alertness. Kourlas people are deathly when they’re tired. I’m aging differently this year, over the proverbial hill. Young bands are making me cranky. They’ll be going into real estate soon. You can hear it in their choruses.

I’m reluctantly revising my Nebraska novel after receiving some solid advice, but it’s a slog. I’d rather be doing anything else, even when a noun becomes a verb, or the sentences are shining.