If you wake up one morning and, peering through your study window, notice a cockerel strutting in your driveway, it may portend unnatural transformations happening in the neighborhood. For example, the noisy girls who petal their tiny bicycles up and down the sidewalk might turn into the columbines that grow in the side yard. Mangy, ragtag hordes of teenage hobos might finally shower, deodorize and seek gainful employment. Mountains of laundry might evaporate and drift away like motes in a sunbeam.

As it stands, though, you've forgotten your tobacco on the patio table in the backyard. It is going stale. A woman you know naps alone in the back bedroom. Having walked to the bottom of the valley, she can't feel the heat of the afternoon anymore. A pineapple waits on the kitchen counter top. You intend to slice it in two, but you don't know when.