Everything is tidy. Bright pillows are propped on the couch. The chairs are tucked in against the table. The counters are clean. The lamps are extinguished. The yellow leaves have been plucked from the houseplants. The hearth has been swept. The dog's water dish has been filled. Now the washing machine grumbles in the cellar. The refrigerator sighs. The faucet drips disconsolately. Cold seeps through the window glass. Suddenly the paragraph becomes fitful and unruly. Who has wrinkled the prim passive voice? What kind of omniscience is this? Two chickadees rap at an empty bird feeder. Ruckus clambers into a lilac bush, planning their execution. In all the history of earth, not a single poem has ever mattered to a kitten or a chickadee. Frost obscures the grass. Deer have eaten my last patch of lettuce, but neat little brussels sprouts still ladder their heavy curving stalks. Ladder is not a verb; it is the wrong word; I can't find the word that means what I mean to say, which is to describe how the sprouts tuck snugly into the wedge of each leaf-stair, which is a list of good-sounding words that doesn't describe them either. The only success is that my sentences have gotten longer, if longer is success. I know a teacher who would call them run-ons. He would grade me accordingly. I would fail.