I roughed out the draft of a poem yesterday morning, and then I finished one editing project and had a Zoom meeting about an upcoming other. Somehow, I'm still working. Last night Tom and I were talking about how strangely fortuitous this is: that he and I are managing to weather this pandemic work-wise, though he continues to worry about the construction bubble and I continue to believe that it's only a matter of time till cash-strapped institutions cut funding to their presses. Still, in the present tense, we're doing okay and thus, when the doorbell rang two nights ago, and I opened it to find a shabby man standing on my front walk--drunk or high; I couldn't tell--my thoughts immediately turned to money: I need to find some for him; that must be what he wants.

I recognized this man. He walks by the house often, and waves, and always calls out something friendly about my peas or beans. Clearly, there was a garden in his past, and he enjoys mine. But this moment was strange, and it was hard to tell what was going to happen next.

Eventually, after some awkward fumbling on both of our parts, he blurted out that he wanted a flower from the garden. And then he said: "She overdosed."

The upshot was: that I came outside with a pair of scissors, and he picked out which flowers he liked best, and I filled his arms with them. In the course of this, he managed to say: "She didn't make it." And "The beer." And "Heroin." He didn't explain, he couldn't, he was in no shape to. I don't know who she was. And the flowers may have ended up in the gutter. It doesn't matter.