[To readers: apparently, WordPress’s mobile app doesn’t like paragraph breaks, and as I was not in the mood at 4:30am to keep fiddling with it, nor do I have the time today to correct it, enjoy the “free verse prose poem” that the post offers you today.]

At nighttime, it’s dark. That might seem obvious to many of you. But to those of us from the city, night means more than darkness. To many in the city, “night-” is followed by “-life.” Which Kerrville decidedly has not. Maybe at The Ol’ Watering Hole, which stays open till 2am and which caters to those who forgot to take their Benadryl as I did but who also drink. (And drive. Because let’s face it: in a town with no Uber and barely a taxi service, gonna be a lot of people getting watered and then driving. My 17-year-old confirms with me that his driving friends say this is common.) I came out to the living room, as quiet as a mouse, only to find the other adult mouse there already, since she couldn’t sleep. She went back to bed ten minutes ago. Then the (blesséd) rain started up. And I do mean blesséd. As late as early evening last night, Kerrville Breaking News had headlines that the planned July 4th fireworks were still happening. (Because it had been raining. But before it was raining, it really wasn’t raining. Wasn’t at all, for a long time.) I came out onto the porch to experience dark and rain together, which I don’t know that I have before in Kerrville. It’s peaceful. I’m glad I have a house with a roof. I think I sometimes confuse inner peace with creature comfort. Street lamps don’t really exist away from downtown. Not on Bandera Highway near us–very dark, with only deer eyes glinting back. Not on the roads inside Comanche Trace, for who wants street lamp light bearing into their bedroom? A few years back, some residents at Manhattan’s famous Ansonia Hotel (now a residence) on Broadway on 73rd Street complained at a Community Board 7 meeting that the Beacon Theater’s flashing neon lights across the street were a public nuisance and kept them awake at night, etc., “Couldn’t something be done at night to shut them off?!” You’d think. But I don’t recall there being any change. New York City’s lights drive commerce. And drive people to commerce. As does Uber (drive people to commerce). Night and light is commerce in New York City. It’s 4:36am here. The mosquitoes are not attacking me yet. On a normal morning by 7:15 in the increasing light, I’d have several bites, and only then would I decide to spray some repellent on.