The quarter moon hangs at its zenith, pale in the cloudless sky.
It’s hot today.
This close to the lake there’s a constant breeze along the shore from the west.  
But not fifty feet out from shore, the tourist schooner Kajima motors silently along with its sails furled in the calm.
Under the spreading hackberry tree Dante sits and reads to Bea.  Her head rests on his oxygen cylinder.
Her back is sweaty and sticking to the grass and dirt.
She dozes.
His voice drones on.
A tale of dinosaurs at the turn of the millennium.
Old fogies in swiftly changing times,
bewildered and sinking in the maelstrom,
once, twice, three times.