Thunder rolls along here like a particularly audible hunger pang. There's nothing to stand in its way—it simply gurgles from one edge of the sky to the other. That, or it weighs low around the horizon, vibrating the seams. I guess it is the real sound of thunder, uncontaminated by a chorus of echoes: skyscrapers and sidewalks and city blocks, bouncing the sound around like more of a man-made panic.

I have been thinking a lot about natural since I've moved to the Midwest. Qualities attributed to the pastoral: open, honest, devout. Of course I am a human, so adaptation is optional. If I wanted to make things hard on myself, I could continue feigning anonymity—stomping down the hill to my house as though the earth's crust was hermetically paved—ignoring the river—interpreting the thunder as a warning.

It's game day today and I can actually sense the increase in psychic energy on this side of town. That, or maybe it's the lightning, or the reverberating loudspeaker, or the jolt of the memory of being woken up in the dead of the night by young men chanting all the lyrics to America the Beautiful. Or perhaps I am feeling keyed in after reading the news article which reported two mountain lion sightings on the west side of town. I just don't know which is more alien to me: camaraderie over the human athlete or against a four-legged beast, arcing sky and racing weather or vibrating concrete, land that's been covered and sealed or land that's been tilled under again and again.