I was born and raised in small towns ten to twenty miles off the I-35 corridor in central Texas, the son of two peach-eating Georgians. My Pa raised me on The Andy Griffith Show and the westerns of Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, and Elmer Kelton. My Mama raised me on Sibelius and church music. Together, they produced in me this strange swirl of language and life, a kind of god-fearing cattle drive marching band. Apart, they taught me loss and fear and unconditional love, a kind of open plain of haunting and hoping. Because of them, because of Texas too, I feel an obligation to the slowness of life, to time spent sitting on the front porch watching a thunderstorm roll in—the smell of rain on hot dirt, a distant flash, a low rumble.

This is what I’m interested in: the static-filled air in the moments before a lightning strike, the black clouds tumbling over one another in a wide unending sky, and the thrill and terror in the mystery of waiting until it all comes plummeting down, drenching. Or, perhaps this: