A goldfinch flies up while other leaves, gold and russety, sift and fall. A flight up, a flight down, the very air marked, so both rising and falling are held in a furor of sun-struck ongoingness.

I am outside this bright afternoon.

And even as I am built anew by fear these days, here, in Baltimore, I am also, right now, assembled by the brisk feel of New England, and fall, and my childhood there. That peace. Those biting blue skies. The elements mingle, brick by brick (though the sensation is softer and welling), and add up to this moment, a seep and twining that constitute now. Of course, this moment has little to do with simple construction, simple addition. But it’s hard not to think in these terms.

I’ll try again.

Events crosshatch: the air this afternoon is cleanly scented, still unstark, and in it, among sheering leaves, among goldfinches lifting and scalloping air, a sniper—in a patch of woods, gas station, mall parking lot—is hiding, aiming, and shooting.

And here, too, is the heavy sweater I’m wearing, thin at the elbows, the bruisy ferment of old apples, leaf dust, clouds stacked high in the west, peace.

Other things, too, are stacking up today: campaigns for Maryland’s governor, though fewer of us now seem to notice, so frightened are we to pump gas, to let the children walk to school. Candidates must wrest control of voter attention, the paper says. “Rest,” I say to my son, who learned from other kindergartners there’s a bad person out there shooting, my son who’s going to take it easy this afternoon, play crazy eights, maybe a little chess, inside.

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