Entering my seventh decade, I found myself under house arrest on the darkest of winter days, clad in plaid pajamas, listening to passenger jets passing over my hovel, they, carrying plague throughout the land, and me surrounded by baying hounds of hell in my neighbors’ backyards, I then chose to venture forth despite dire warnings from physicians and politicians alike, in search of solace, to my provincial city’s botanical garden, I did go.

On exiting the alley of my humble domicile, I did spy a white Chevrolet SUV adorned with U.S. government license plates on a back street of Maple Wood, and thus pondered why its driver chose to terry by the telephone pole that linked my shelter to the  babble known collectively as the Worldwide Web.

No rhyme or reason could I fathom why said imperial emissary would travel or linger in this undistinguished district far from the cradle of civilization, among its poor and destitute inhabitants. But neither did I dwell on his unexpected presence on this dreary day, commencing instead to travel without hesitation from my county fiefdom to the city proper and its exquisite amenities, where I walked through nature and did calm and replenish my body and soul.

On returning to the relative comfort of my dwelling place, I did there seek sanctuary, but was startled by visions through the ether, received via a cathode-ray tube, showing the glorious capitol edifice of our Empire under apparent siege by despicable vandals and huns, who entered into the corridors of power with seeming ease, and a dearth of resistance from our nation state’s sturdy and plentiful guardians of peace and tranquility.

The images so did awe and confuse me, I quaked with dread and thereby prayed them end for the good of all. Only in the wake of this chaotic scene, did I then pause and ruminate over the queer circumstances I witnessed from afar, and then worried of the sequence of events that had unfolded both in the hinterlands of my residency and in the far away fortified capital. Then did I wonder: If our omnipotent empire’s envoys do so occupy and patrol the provinces where we live, and watch over us all, and keep us safe from foreign and domestic agents of terror, and prevent us from harming one another and ourselves, why then were they unable to staunch the tide of the lowly rabble who entered unmolested into the hollowed halls of our empire’s most sacred temple?