He did not know the names of the birds that crossed the freeway ahead of him. Every night. Heading home. Twilight. He had never known their names. They moved in patterns older than the road, older than the towers rising in the darkness. Stuck in traffic, he watched them until they were gone.

Later that week he stood in the yard with his hands at his sides. The bees worked the lantana and the rosemary and they did not look up. A scrub jay called from the telephone wire and another answered from the palm and he thought about the word extinct and how it sounded like something already dead. The afternoon light lay golden on the grass but the grass did not know. The bees did not know. To see the end of things while standing in its midst.

In the dark hours the owls called across the canyon. Who. Who. Who? As if asking a question that had no answer. He lay awake and listened to them speak in their secret language and he thought perhaps they knew more than he did. Perhaps they had always known. That everything passes. That the world turns and burns and turns again. That they would go on calling to each other in the dark long after the lights went out in all the houses or they would not and either way the sky would fill with stars that did not care. The owls would continue to speak. He listened to them until he finally fell asleep.