At the old house on 719 E 4th St, remodeled as are all my settings with shadow and murky light, I am home again after an absence...and all is not well.

There is a proceeding happening. Strangers (to me, but I assume familiar to one another) mill about. Nothing is actually happening, which means an administrative action of some sort.

I learn the cause is pollution. There is tin in the ground of the community of Bonham, and what's more, my mother or our family is responsible. I see old cans brought as evidence. My mother has them to show our landfill is not the cause, as these cans and labels show they have silver lining, or tungsten.

I wait to one side. Finally, I say to one guy seated (dark and sinister if smiley, or because of that) my name, and he says, "You don't want my name. It's like meeting in a wood with shotguns." Ah, okay. I wait.

There is in the bathroom fixture, and filling a tube beside it the size of a waterheater but of clear material, sludge. I understand the sewage, maybe because of all the tin in the ground, no longer runs. Like desolate folk everywhere, my Mom moves about without panic in the gathering crisis.

We all ebb from the 4th St room and now we're on an unfamiliar street, and entering a building. This is a courtroom, I'm thinking. I don't ask any questions, probably because of the earlier rebuff. I don't seem to be able to speak with Mom.

This is a tin-in-the-ground, crap-on-the-surface sort of dream.