As the siren grew louder in the neighborhood and interrupted his morning coffee and the serenity of his mind which had been stuck in that moment preceding the moment the blossoming siren had first pushed through a needled, leafy barrier of stagnant thought like a crocus in the flower bed (he'd been staring at the damp lilacs just beyond the front window made deeper in purple hue by the morning rain), he silently promised someone, anyone, that he would return to looking, remembering against his will what the great American poet had written: No idea but in things.