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Off-Season The rain tells knock-knock jokes. Spiders batten down the doors. Goldenrod keeps its lights on all day, a funeral cortège as long as a president’s. One particular cricket sings distinctly, close by. He is Ishi, the pure voice of summer before tourists. Butterflies flutter like the last load of laundry hung out to dry. The beach looks littered with summer people’s broken furniture but it is just the tide’s huge ideograms. Wind, which starched the neighbors’ flag, now pleats the water into waves like a waiter folding fancy napkins. The restaurant will close though the waves continue, eternity’s assembly-line like the one weekenders escaped from. The neighbors have returned to Florida, where they are winter people. Gulls gossip, but only about locals. Already the crickets have begun to sound like sleigh bells. 23 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. ...

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