I've been reading Horace's Ars Poetica, composed during Rome's Augustan Age, alongside Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country, set in the Everglades at the turn of the twentieth century. I've been thinking about Ben Jonson and Lord Byron and gold spray paint for my son's Halloween costume. I've been masterminding the other son's doctor's appointment and forking over gas money and baking pumpkins. I've been unable to compose a Facebook status. I've been watching late-afternoon clouds, navy blue and ominous, bullying their way across a pallid sky. I've been thinking about Borges and the World Series and forgetting to write "mustard" on the grocery list. I've been letting the dog in and letting the dog out and letting the dog in and sweeping up ashes from the hearth and thinking about the King James Version versus the Revised Standard Version. I've been sitting in the Dexter library's reading room listening to a fat cat wash its feet. I've been pondering my son's remark, "The best place to see strange people is at the grocery store," and countering with "What about a hospital waiting room? Or a bus station?" I've been feeding old freezer-burnt tortillas to greedy chickens and ineffectually coaxing the poodle to swallow a pill. I've been finishing crossword puzzles while ignoring the sudoku. I've been imagining a poem about a 1940s baseball star from Donora, Pennsylvania, and dreaming early-morning dreams that I can't remember once I wake up. I've been digging up a garden bed for garlic; I've been reading the local obituaries; I've been nagging my son to brush his teeth; I've been reading the poetry of Alexander Pope. I've been sitting here in my raggedy bathrobe typing this note to you instead of filling the woodbox and hauling water for the goat. Therefore, as the shouting goat reminds me, I must stop doing this job and go do hers instead.