I have so many things to do, but my dog is sleeping on my lap.

A turkey vulture glides over the creek, wings bent, head down. Fist-shaped clouds fill the sky. Am I the only one who braces a little all the time — in the Walmart, in the wildlands, in my home? You just never know what’s coming. When I was manic, I told the ER doctor my family was always exploding and floating. It’s true. The only way we survived each other was to float like vultures in our violent skies. Mania is a way to float when gravity’s fussy little hands won’t let go, when the weight of reality is unsurvivable. It’s a way up and out, all wing and wonder. Then you land, hard, the earth splitting you with its open hand. What’s my faith? That I’ll be broken again in this lifetime. I have faith in that the way the vulture has faith that he’ll find carrion before nightfall.

The vultures and the storm arrive together. Below, the dead, waiting. Below, the dry land, waiting. Famine, feast. Drought, water. A blue tractor pushes a single bale of hay across the pasture just before the rain begins to fall.

I hated the wind when I couldn’t escape the wind. Now the wind is gone. I miss the wind. I love the wind.

Part wind part sand. Part sand part canyon. Part canyon part water. Part water part stone. Part stone part moss. Part moss part bark. Part bark part loam. Part loam part clay. Part clay part man. Part man part prayer. Part prayer part song. Part song part wind. Part wind part sand.

This morning, the sky is a common opal, milky blue-white with deeper blue-gray behind that. Nothing shining through. Nothing casting off light. Nothing for us to point at and say, There it is, evidence of God. This dull sky hangs above the desert’s painted soils, its gutted reefs, its nameless headstones. It neither consumes us nor purges us. Just another day. Just another sky. We’ve all seen thousands like it. Good morning.

Facebook, how would I watch two rescued prairie dogs eat grape tomatoes without you?

Isn’t this why we’re all here? To postpone our own and each other’s departures? From life, I mean. From life.