My once-shaded morning spot is now striped with sunlight as greenery thins and light lowers. To listen to the cicadas you’d never know that summer is winding down. They’re as whirring and wonderful as ever. 

But to this stationary human, it’s all in the angles and shadows: not just a later sunrise and an earlier sunset, but countless other reminders based on known shadow points.

Sometimes I feel like a sundial, my movements charted and parsed, my dial controlled by a vast, uncontrollable force.