The Fiddler on the Roof

Daylight savings time doesn't start until the end of the month. I leave for work at 06:00 A.M., and the sky has been startlingly dark at that hour. With intermittent rain for weeks, everything is soaked and smells faintly of wet leaves. The air feels like a soft quilt on a cool night.

It is the perfect time to talk to God, if I can fight off the compulsion to put Bob Dylan: No Direction Home in the CD player. But there’s no hurry, and so, first, I tell all my issues to God.

When I’m done, the fiddler likes to play, for himself, and recite his favorite poem of late, Hello Daddy. He tells me it was written by a little girl, Elizabeth Lynn Rakphongphairoj, and it comforts me.

By the time I get to the parking lot at work, the sun has risen, and the fiddler has vanished.