SPOTLIGHT: The Late Bloomer by Mark Falkin @markfalkin @rarebirdbooks @califcoldblood
The Late Bloomer
by Mark Falkin
Spotlighting this postapocalyptic YA adventure - see the many praises already allotted for this read, the synopsis, about the author, a Q&A and an excerpt below.
Imagine The Stand told with the intimacy of Thirteen Reasons Why.
The world experiences an abrupt and unthinkable cataclysm on the morning of October 29, 2018. Kevin March, high school band trombonist and wannabe writer playing hooky, is witness to its beginning. To stay alive, Kevin embarks on a journey that promises to change everything yet again. On his journey, he chronicles his experiences on a digital recorder. This book is a transcript of that recording.
Depicting an unspeakable apocalypse unlike any seen in fiction—there are no zombies, viruses or virals, no doomsday asteroid, no aliens, no environmental cataclysm, no nuclear holocaust—with a protagonist in the tradition of Holden Caulfield, The Late Bloomer is both a companion piece to Lord of the Flies and a Bradburyian Halloween tale.
The Late Bloomer is harrowing, grim and poignant in the way of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Told in Kevin March’s singular and unforgettable voice, delivering a gripping narrative with an unsparing climax as moving as it is terrifying, The Late Bloomer defies expectations of the genre and will haunt those who read it.
Mark Falkin is the author of the novels Days of Grace and Contract City, which was nominated for the Whiting, Shirley Jackson, Alex, Morris, Edgar, PEN/Bingham, PEN/Hemingway, LA Times, Anisfield-Wolf, and Flaherty-Dunnan awards. Though he remains a card-carrying member of the Texas Bar, he is a literary agent by day and oftentimes by night. He lives with his wife and daughters in Austin, Texas. He used to vocalize in a band that rocked and rolled.
PRAISE FOR THE LATE BLOOMER:
“I fell deep into the postapocalyptic and addictively complex world of The Late Bloomer and didn’t want it
to end. Not only is it a wonderful, binge-able story, but the voice of the central character had me hooked
from the beginning, and Kevin March became a person I cared about, thought about, even after the last
page was finished.”
—Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will
“Like a sharp, winding staircase that narrows as it turns, the claustrophobic world of The Late Bloomer
hems the reader in page by page.”
—Tal M. Klein, author of The Punch Escrow
“Harrowing, unsettling and exquisitely written, The Late Bloomer is part War of the Worlds, part Twilight
Zone, and part Shirley Jackson. It is an unforgettable, unforgiving vision of the end of the world, of those
who attempt to survive and those who wish to stop them. The images conjured here will haunt you long
after putting it down. Good luck, dear reader.”
—Louisa Luna, author of Two Girls Down
“With pitch-perfect prose, Falkin has penned an irresistible and audacious coming-of-age novel that
plumbs the depths of adolescence and global cataclysm in equal, page-turning measure. I predict The Late
Bloomer will take it’s place on the post-apocalyptic bestseller list, next to Station Eleven and The Stand.”
—Will Clarke, author of The Neon Palm of Madame Melançon and Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles.
“An apocalyptic tale unlike any other, The Late Bloomer is smartly written; with shades of Stephen King
meeting Cormac McCarthy, a blistering pace and lyrical prose, it demands to be consumed. Falkin’s take
on the end of the world is intriguing, beautiful and tragic—a must-read.”
—Kristen Zimmer, Amazon #1 bestselling author of The Gravity Between Us.
1 Please, God, don’t let her die.1
Kevin. I don’t know.
He’s the one just
trying to survive. To tell it the way
things
1 To
be truthful, when I first heard the
sounds, I was lighting a bowl of pot.
16 I closed my eyes and shook
my head with vigor
to clear it. Surely,
I was
AUTHOR Q&A
What do you consider to be the main theme or message in The Late
Bloomer?
It’s
usually only after I’ve written a first draft of something in fiction do I begin
to know what it means. Let me mix metaphors: you uncork the subconscious and it
drives; it’s doing the thematic heavy lifting. It’s telling you something but
it’s obscure for a while. Your subconscious stands outside a frosted window and
scratches at it, moaning, this is what
I’m saying. With The Late Bloomer,
upon finishing the last words and typing The
End (and then having a shot of whatever brown alcohol is immediately on
hand, day or night, usually day, usually morning,
a completion-of-first-draft tradition) I asked, “What the hell does this mean?”
Though it will evolve and refine over time, for now I’ve come to believe that
what my subconscious theme-driving taskmaster said through me the mere
scrivener was: there is total terror in groupthink. When the individual cedes
its autonomy to the mob, that’s when the darkness falls and the nightmares
begin. Yes, it indeed takes a village to make things go, but it takes a village
of individuals. The concept of the loss of the self is frightening. It’s not an
uncommon theme. It’s a truth that, per Emily Dickinson’s axiom, I told slant.
Related to this theme is horror vacui
– fear of the void. That silence of the world Kevin battles is perhaps the loss
of self to the void.
If
you were an evil witch or warlock, what literary antecedents or influences
would you say went into the cauldron that generated The Late Bloomer?
Toil and trouble—Lord of the Flies, Barker’s story In the Hills, the Cities, and Shirley Jackson. Lovecraft, whose
writing is so fussy and stilted (yet something about that aspect makes it all
the more terrifying), the deep cosmic/existential horror he fathoms is there
for sure. Other characteristics common to this genepool sprung from the fey
codes lying in wait on the dark side of the helix exist in I Am Legend, The Stand, Arthur
Machen’s The Great God Pan. McCarthy’s
The Road is there in the cauldron I
suppose, if I were to do a reduction sauce. The films The Blair Witch Project and The
Wicker Man (1973) without question went to work on me, as did the Twilight Zone classic The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.
What inspired you to write this story in particular?
The
three simultaneous sparks were these: There’s a line in Lord of the Flies that goes You
knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s
no go? Why things are what they are? and a little supernova exploded in my
mind and I probably said behind clenched teeth in public “that’s it!” The
book’s working title was No Go for a
long time and was even initially pitched with that title. There’s that and
there’s a certain work of fiction that I can’t disclose for spoilage reasons;
the way it made, still makes, me feel . . . I approached this book at the
outset from the standpoint of wanting to make the reader feel like I did
reading that work. And then there’s this: a few people reading might remember
these emails I used to send out during October years ago, I think 1998 through
2003. They were these epistolary little stories that came in bi-weekly
installments that I called the Chronicles of Spooky Month which over the years
got longer, less funny and more scary. In maybe 2012 I attempted to take a run
at it again for fun and as a palette cleanser. I wrote a couple thousand words
and put it away, never sending anything out. This was the impetus for The Late Bloomer. This book really is an
all-grows-up, exploded version of that. Pure fun. Labor of love.
Ultimately,
I love the genre. What inspired me was that I wanted to write a horror novel
that was unlike anything else out there and that was the scariest thing I could
think of and what makes it scary isn’t just a set piece here, a set piece
there, but something that holistically makes you shudder, making you feel
something deeper than just simple fear but rather a resonating poignancy
through the pathos.
Why did you choose to tell it through the point of view of Kevin and not one of
the book's other leads Kodie or Bass?
Kevin’s being and voice came first and only
and loudest, and the structure of the narrative—a transcribed audio
recording—simply forced the POV upon him exclusively.
You used to play in a rock band — would you say Kevin is your literary
stand-in?
I
share some feelings and opinions with Kevin but I share them with Kodie and
Bass too. It’s not entirely inaccurate to say that those three may be the
fictive me, the homo fictus me (well,
there’s a fourth, fifth, and sixth: Darla Clowes, Sara Page Christie and Ian
Alexander Jasper Johns) split into parts. But Kevin…yeah, he’s an avatar.
Frankly, he’s kinda my hero.
Do you consider this a “coming of age” story for Kevin?
Kevin
is forced to grow up mighty fast. It’s fight or flight, so in that way, yes.
His coming of age is, let’s say, accelerated.
Who do you hope reads this novel?
Absolutely
everybody who likes jet black books that you can’t put down. Kevin’s story may
have the outward appearance of young adult literature, but it’s no more limited
to that genre than King’s It, replete
as it is with questing teens, or Lord of
the Flies itself. The marketing hack who lives inside me insists,
“Tell ‘em it’s horror for the John Green reader! And be sure to mention Bird Box!”
What thought(s) do you want readers to come away with most after
finishing The Late Bloomer?
I
don’t know that it’s a discrete thought I want to leave them with but rather a
feeling: haunted. And not just a haunting that’s fearsome but one that holds
within it an abiding resonance that over time lingers as a heart-panging
poignancy more than dread or fright. I believe horror can teach and reach
deeply, maybe deepest. After all, all love stories are ghost stories.
What makes you want to write?
What
Bernard Malamud said: I’d be too moved to say.
What got you started in writing?
In
third and fourth grade I would make these holiday themed puzzle books for my
classmates. I’d create this hand drawn book and ask my Dad to run off copies at
work which he dutifully did, having his secretary do it. She stapled them too. The
teacher was flummoxed and thrilled at my self-aggrandizing precociousness,
helping me hand them out at home room around Halloween, Thanksgiving,
Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter. They were mini versions of those Highlights kids’ magazines and they
uniformly contained a word search, a crossword, a maze you solved with your
finger or pencil, hidden pictures, and flash fiction. Really flash—“I saw Santa
in my living room on Christmas Eve and he’s sure fat alright.” The looks on my
classmates’ faces trying to solve my
puzzles, read my little story… oh, I
was hooked then. Orwell wrote of the sheer egoism of the writer. I felt that
glory in Third Grade.
Skip
to high school and I found myself doodling epigrams in the margins of whatever
we were doing in AP English class. These later bloomed into bad poetry. I did
the bad poetry thing off and on through college and law school. In law school I
thought I could do what Grisham did and write a novel my first year, that
blistering 1L year. Um, no, I didn’t pull that off, but I did start a novel
that I published ten years later.
What other writers have inspired your own writing?
Oh,
God. All writers, even bad ones, inspire in some way. The ones I can longlist,
who combined form my lodestar are Stewart O’Nan, Daniel Woodrell, Douglas
Coupland, Stephen King, Karen Russell, Barker, Palahniuk, Lethem, DFW, Ellis, Proulx,
McCarthy, McGuane, William Gibson, Bradbury, Updike, Capote, Oates, TC Boyle,
Sedaris. Steve Martin’s Cruel Shoes.
Oh
and Vonnegut, Kerouac, and the insufferable personality that is Hunter S.
Thompson.
Tommy
Orange inspires me. Merritt Tierce inspires me. Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love inspires me. Emil Ferris
inspires me. Billy Collins inspires me. Joan Didion inspires me. Kate Tempest
inspires me.
Not
listed: Faulkner. Henry James.
Who is your favorite author/what is your favorite book?
As we sit here today it remains O’Nan
and his book A Prayer for the Dying.
What is the easiest/hardest thing about writing?
Nothing is easy about writing. Blood from a
stone, etcetera. But the hardest
comes after the book is done and you try to find anybody to give a shit about
it.
Do you have any plans for future installments set in the world of The Late
Bloomer?
I
do, but I’m working on something else right now. I’ve written two books in a
row that are ostensibly YA dystopian/apocalyptic. I’m veering away from that
genre but may steer back if The Late
Bloomer finds a readership that demands the next.
Was any part of The Late Bloomer especially challenging to
write?
I’ll
restate my response to 15, adding that this book was the most fun I’ve had
writing. It just came. I paced the floor and talked to myself a lot and acted
out scenes in my living room—this goes without saying—but I did much less
pacing this time. The ending was not hard to write per se but it was hard to
emotionally contend with.
What, if anything, did you learn during the process of writing, rewriting, and
editing this novel?
So
much, as with any novel, that it’s hard to convey. One specific thing I can say
is that with this, because it’s so literally voice driven, I learned how to
tell a story in a highly conversational and informal way. Kevin speaks to his
dear reader. I speak to my dear reader.
How long did you work on The Late Bloomer?
I
don’t know how to measure that but the period during which it was written spanned
from 2012-2015, not including revisions after the publisher acquired it.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
There’s no muse, guys and gals. Just set a word count goal
and sit down and write not what you know but what you must know, what you’ve
got to know. Yes, every day, until it hurts and then write through that until
it sings. There’s a funky physical high that comes with writing. I lose time
and feel an aesthetic bliss. Maybe it’s endorphins? Whatever it is, I’m a junky
for it.
Write on those days you don’t feel like it. When
you’ve got a cold, when you’re stressed about your day job, when your personal
life is FUBAR, when you’re really hungover and just don’t wanna and you
petulantly stamp your feet expressing same. Do that so many times that you
can’t even begin to count how many and then you’re starting to become a writer,
whether the IRS recognizes you as such or not. You are.
EXCERPT
TRANSCRIPTION OF AUDIO RECORDING OF
KEVIN GABRIEL MARCH
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2018
TRANSCRIPTION
OF AUDIO RECORDING OF KEVIN GABRIEL
MARCH OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2018
1 Please, God, don’t let her die.1
2
3
4
5 So,
prologue.2
6 Mr. E, you’d like that I’m trying
to do this. Instead
of videoing everything
7 and narrating over it. I couldn’t have done that anyway. There
was no time
8 to be a
reflective documentarian. Now that I’ve
got some time, maybe I can
9 process all this and tell you what happened.
10 In fact, doing it this way is how I process it.
11 I know you’d prefer
this to, well… you were such a supporter of my writing,
12 a mentor.
And so telling
this with the intention
of writing it down instead
of
13 filming it…I know you hated the world
of screens we’d come to live in. I tend
14 to agree with you now, though
at first I thought you were being
a crabby old
15 teacher who
didn’t get it and stubbornly didn’t want to. Referred to yourself as
16 a Luddite. I had to look it up.
1 But it’s me who
gets it now. I was getting
it then, the
way you saw
things,
2 which wasn’t negative
at all. I got that you were trying to show me that
3 through storytelling I could show readers that the world is a beautiful
place,
4 that life is a beautiful thing, even when we’re scared
and we don’t understand
5 what life is and who we are and why we live and what happens after
we die.
6 “Don’t let anybody tell you
they know, because they
don’t,” you’d said.
When I
7 repeated this at the dinner table to my stepdad, Martin,
he said, “Sounds
like
8 your
typical liberal school teacher who can’t hack
it in the real world so he
9 teaches, warping
minds with his embitterment.” Pretty poetic for an asshole
10 like Martin, I have to say. I remember
offering him a brittle
smile when he said
11 that, nodding
my head, and muttering to myself,
“Embitterment, hmmm.”
12 And what you said about stories.
I really get that now, too. You’d said
13 they weren’t just about filling time, entertainment.
Not that that’s wrong, a
14 story can be both meaningful and entertaining,
you’d said, should be both
15 for it to resonate. You told me that stories connect us, make us understand
16 ourselves and each
other a little better. That stories
make the world a better
17 place because they are
empathy engines.
18 I like that. Empathy engine.
Vroom vroom.
19 It’s a
noble cause, storytelling, you’d said.
Noble work.
20 So, here
I go with being noble.
21 This is for you Mr. English,
probably for you more than anyone, except
22 that it’s really for you, dear reader.3
23 Okay, so, even more prologue. Of the housekeeping ilk.
24 I’m using a little handheld digital micro voice recorder4 to talk this book
25 into being. I took it when we broke into RadioShack. The box5 it came in said
26 Capture Your Stories
with that circled
R trademark thing next to it. So, that’s
27 what I’m doing: capturing
my story. I’ll shape it later, if I make it.
28 I hate that I even
have to say
that. If I make it.
God. I want to unplug that
29 part of my self. Got
to keep my spirits up. I know
that part of me is the least
 |
2 are. The reason…why things are what they are. Heh.
3 I’d sit and write
it properly, this book,
a narrative non-fiction they’ll
call it,
4 because even
though it’s got a novelish, fictiony feel to it, it’s all
true. Or maybe
5 it’s a
memoir. A memwah. That’s what it is.
6 Whatever. Point is, I can’t just sit and write it all down because if I don’t
7 keep moving…well, I don’t know what they’d do. But she’s waiting for me, so I
8 can’t stop. And doing this keeps me company.
This and Maggie here.
Isn’t that
9 right, girl?
10 I mean, I always wanted to be a writer.
Here’s my chance.
Maybe my only
11 and last, but.
12 In
case I don’t get too far along doing this, I have to say that although I’ve
13 got my reasons
for going down there, I can’t say I feel like I’m truly
going to
14 save them. But maybe I can help them. It’s all a big fat maybe, as it has been
15 from day one. They seem to think differently. Kodie says they do, at least.
But
16 I don’t know. We’re just too different now. There’s something, what?
pernicious
17 about them. Sure,
because of what they did, but mostly it’s in the way they
18 move, the way they flock...
19 If I repeat myself or if this sounds clunky sometimes, just know that this
20 is raw raw raw. I’m going
to really write this someday.
I need to ‘capture
my
21 story’ now because I don’t know about tomorrow. Tomorrow is so far-seeming.
22 After all that’s happened, it would be foolish to say you’re going
to know what
23 happens next.
24 But I think this book will be important because
I think I may be the only
25 one left. It certainly feels that way. Unless
she really is there
waiting for me like
26 she says she is.
27 Oh,
duh—got off
track there.
Let me get this out of the way. Okay, I’m
28 Kevin Gabriel
March and I live in Austin,
Texas. I’m not sure what day it
29 is, the day I start this recording, November something, but all this started
30 the morning of October 29, 2018. I’m a,
I was, a high school
junior and I’m
31 seventeen
years old. Birthday’s December 24. Always hated that timing. We
32 get the
gift-shaft, we who are born so close
to Christmas. You just don’t get
33 celebrated. You get overlooked.
1 Dreams and visions swirl. They’re heavy and seem important. Not just
2 my brain firing, my mind reacting
to conscious life. So many feelings,
sights
3 and
sounds, but this one’s been a repeater—a beach; a big sound of something
4 rubbing up against
an object in the water, a wooden pier, maybe; nightfall
5 and fires in a row, dancing
silhouettes; in midmorning light, a blurry presence
6 perched
on the sea’s horizon.
7 They can
do the jobs of armies.
Odd thing is, they don’t seem to act at
8 the behest of a leader. They move as quicksilver, like one organism,
a massive
9 flock of birds abruptly
lifting into the air, undulating,
twisting, graying the
10 sky; or like a school of fish winding and turning all shiny in shafts of light
11 knifing down through the water. A content and contiguous group, a single
12 entity moving and working and living
en masse, seeming
to move toward a
13 moment. Moving
inexorably toward it.
14 As am I.
15 Right now, I don’t watch them. Now I move. It’s just dawn, best time to move.
16 Yesterday morning, from atop of the W Hotel, I saw them through my
17 $1,000 binoculars. Per usual, they were out in the open,
a beige wintering
18 Texas field beyond the floodplain south of the city. I wonder now if they are
19 the ones following me. No, I don’t think they do it that way. They don’t need to
20 follow me. I think they relay the message ever-forward: here he comes.
21 It
was predawn, just when the rim of sky in
Austin
went that violet
22 crown attributed by
O. Henry,
(Does this matter, Mr. English, the color at
23 dawn? Sometimes I just want to describe the beauty and the horror because
24 that’s what life is.
Guess that’s
why you said I’d make
a better poet than a
25 novelist. I remember asking, “Can I tell them what happens next but with
26 lyrical writing?”
You smiled so big and your eyes shined.) I saw their bellies,
27 all of them
together in total synchronization, of course, swelling and deflating
28 rapidly though they’re asleep. Maybe they’re having bad dreams in that deep
29 REM sleep?
30 But what
would they dream about?
31 Anyway. Enough of this. Let’s start from the beginning.
32 Okay. Deep breath. Here goes...
1 To
be truthful, when I first heard the
sounds, I was lighting a bowl of pot.
2 Most of the western hemisphere lay gripped by predawn sleep,
and
3 there I was, sitting cross-legged on a boulder
at Mount Bonnell, overlooking
4 Lake Austin.
Yeah, that’s me there in your mind’s eye, the silhouette of a
5 young man holding a blue finger
of flame in the dark.
6 The bowl blooming orange,
that’s when it happened. Holding the smoke
7 in my
lungs, I hear this…sound.
8 Sure,
I’d be thinking it, too, if I were you: the guy’s a burnout, he’s
9 hearing stuff. Yeah.
10 But
if you’re reading this,
the very fact that you’re reading
this, you
11 know exactly
what I’m talking about
and so you know a couple of hits of
12 low-impact smoke had
no role to play in what I was hearing
at dawn of that
13 morning, the morning of the day of. So let’s move on.
14 But just so you know, no, I am not a pothead, a burnout. Not being
15 defensive, but I’m not. In fact, I was still
new to the
whole smoking-pot
16 thing. Sure,
when you’re waking and baking alone
at an urban overlook,
17 you’ve moved out of novice territory, but still.
18 Really what
I was on that morning
was a heartbroken and stressed-
19 out trombonist.
20 So, I keep holding it in. I stifle a cough, feel
my face go red,
ropey veins
21 popping out
on my neck. I’m listening, lungs full of smoke, eyes
toggling.
22 At first, I thought they were testing the
tornado sirens. The sounds
23 started with this low shuddering boom, then came a wailing
siren. A
24 bomb blast followed
immediately by sirens?
Something over at the military
25 installation, Camp Mabry?
They do battle
reenactments over there.
But at
26 dawn? Couldn’t be.
No storm, no bomb, no war games.
Had to be a test.
But
27 why
at the stroke of dawn,
waking up the city? Can’t be.
28 Within seconds,
the sound became so loud that I coughed out the
29 smoke and stood
up on the boulder.
Smoke wisped above
my head. I faced
30 west, looking out over Lake Austin. What was called
Lake Austin was really
31 the dammed up Lower Colorado
River. Moving south beyond
Lady Bird
32 Lake, the river
flowed southeast through
LaGrange, Bay City, to the Gulf of
33 Mexico, dumping into the Matagorda Bay between Corpus and Galveston.
34 The sound came from the downriver direction, my left.
And the sound
now,
1 though constant and siren-like, was the deep and mournful
tone of what I
2 thought were
the sounds made
by whales. Whales
in extremis.
3 Whale sounds.
In Austin, Texas.
4 More than whale sounds.
Otherworldly sounds; countless
whales not
5 just moaning
and sighing and singing, but crying out.
6 Screaming.
7 I heard
a distant tinny crash.
To the upriver right,
on the Pennybaker
8 Bridge, this big
rust-colored double arc,
there are flames.
So far away
that
9 it looks like
an orange wink
between two dots.
The dots were
cars and the
10 fire bloomed. Had to be a big wreck to create a fire I could see from miles
11 away. The sounds waned
then fell off
as quickly as they had
come. The arc
12 of first
light was just up in the east,
soon to be a red ball hanging
next to
13 the University of Texas clock tower
like a counterpoint. Muscles in my
14 shoulders relaxed from being hunched
against the sound.
I looked at the
15 pipe in my hand, incredulous. What am I smoking,
my God?
16 I closed my eyes and shook
my head with vigor
to clear it. Surely,
I was
17 hearing and
seeing things.
18 Kept my eyes closed for a beat, another.
19 A hawk cried down in the valley. I felt the breeze on my cheeks. I heard
20 the whelming hum of a waking city. With your eyes closed
you can really
21 hear it all. The
metallic clacks and
low roar of a city
all around you.
22 I opened my eyes.
Down on the bridge there
was a line of smoke
rising
23 to the
sky and in the distance I heard emergency sirens. Car and
home
24 alarms everywhere.
25 Now something caught my eye to my left.
It looked like a ripple coming
26 up the river.
27 Slowly fetching upriver, maybe
five feet high, stretched entirely across
28 in an even line. Weird because
the Colorado is dammed in several places
29 between here and
Matagorda, including the
big one right
down there, the
30 Tom Miller Dam. I’d kayaked
around Red Bud Isle often
with Martin and
31 Johnny. Tom Miller is pretty
high, maybe one hundred feet.
32 Coming. Close,
close, close.
33 Trying to beat it, I jumped
down from the boulder and ran up the rutted
34 stone trail to the limestone
overlook and watched
it come. Riding,
gliding on
1 top of it was a large, pointed
shadow. I glanced up to see what kind of cloud
2 made
that shape, moved
that fast. Nothing
in the sky but dawn’s blue.
3 The wave rolled past. It lapped
up onto the straight-edged shorelines.
4 The water swept over jutting
docks, leapt up and collapsed
onto the golf-
5 green yards, the water’s-edge swimming
pools, the driveways
and outlooks
6 where cocktail
parties were had.
7 It just rolled by—so
quiet. The shore
got wet, the
docks rose and
fell,
8 nothing broke,
no noise.
9 On it went toward the bridge with the line of smoke
fingering the sky
10 like calligraphy.
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