I was just sitting here thinking that I maybe ought to got into the kitchen and put on a little pot of decaf coffee, and about the surpassingly profound, though perhaps not self-evident truism that half of all people are below average. Half, I suppose, are above. And as the guy perched precariously right smack in the middle, it falls to me to remind those of you over on that side that some folks talk slow and always seem about a block and a half from the end of the sentence, while others sort stacks of useless paragraphs like cord wood. Either way, it’ll be necessary to encounter them with patience.

So here are a few lines of poetry.

Even before she reached the empty house,
She beat her wings ever so lightly, rose,
Followed a bee where apples blew like snow;
And then, forgetting what she wanted there,
Too full of blossom and green light to care,
She hurried to the ground, and slipped below.

from “My Grandmother’s Ghost” by James Wright