A steady rain is falling this morning, and the air is hurricane-heavy. Yellowing leaves gleam in the low light. A pair of chickadees taps at the feeder tray. On the rug at my feet, the poodle sighs in her sleep.

I expected to be on the road today, but my meeting was postponed; so here I am, standing at my desk staring through wet window glass into a sopping forest instead of driving for six hours in a downpour.

A few thoughts are sifting through my mind: crass ones, such as "I wonder if any of you might be willing to write an Amazon review of Same Old Story," but also tender ones, such as "I miss my college boy," which I am doing, quite intensely, at this moment.

Aren't there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?
                     Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.
            More often
those moments
    when roads of light and storm
    open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
                                      God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes. 

--from Denise Levertov, "Annunciation"