I could go on here forever, couldn’t I?

Although if you go on for too long,  your audience goes away.  They cease to listen.

What difference?  For most of my life, my writing has had an audience of one.  What difference does another ten or twenty make?

And in the end, who really does care about a bird and the string of betrayals exercised by and visited upon a single life?

That first night we stayed the night with our friend Hank in Santa Rosa.  We set up fencing in the backyard to protect Poe from the two dogs.  Once released, he squawked with agitation, pacing the pavement, bereft it seemed in his new environment.  I played bad father and bad guest, ignoring Mazie, feeding the bird, wanting badly to calm him, mindless to the shit he deposited all over the patio.

We slept fitfully.