I woke this morning to the patter of raindrops against the windows, and then the low hoot of a ship's horn at the pier downtown, and then the blare of a train's horn from the tracks at the end of the street, and then the clank and squeak of freight cars, and then the chop of a helicopter on its way to the hospital, and then the cat started to yowl to go outside.

In Harmony I also heard a lot of transportation noises--empty pulp trucks clattering down the frost-heaved roads, and skidders growling in log yards, and local pickups in need of exhaust systems snorting and belching up gravel driveways. So, for me, ships and trains retain a certain picturesque novelty . . . though the helicopter presence is different. The hospital is located across the street from the ballpark, an easy walk from our house, and as we sat there this summer watching games, we could see the Life Flight helicopter come in for a landing on the hospital roof--a slow and elegant circling and settling, and meanwhile on board some human being was suffering terribly.

The movement of people, the movement of goods: everything in flux and transition. All night long the trains rattle by, the cars sift past on the freeway, the planes rise and sink, the ships tug against their moorings, sky passengers linger a breath away from death.

And now, for a pale moment, I hear silence--only the tap of raindrops, the click of my fingers on the keys, the inner sighs of my body--and I look up and the world is dipped in mist, and it is a Saturday morning in September, on a leafy street, in a small northern city beside the sea, and I seem to live here.