Another cold morning, and the nights are creeping in as well. Sky and light are autumn; cicadas shriek their love; birds fatten for travel. If I were back in the woods, I'd be getting ready for the Harmony Fair.

Instead, I am prepping for a reading, planning a giant boy-filling stew, inventing a dessert (puff pastry filled with lime-scented creme patisserie), trying to finish an exhausting editing project, frying a big fat fresh puffball foraged from my own yard (!), harvesting tomatoes peppers eggplant kohlrabi okra cucumbers greens lettuces herbs, walking on sidewalks, listening to helicopters, washing sheets, chatting to my neighbors, looking under shrubs for the cat, ordering excellent Chinese food, living in a house with two bathrooms, a furnace, and garbage pickup, mooning about words, going out in the evenings to listen to bands from other continents, reading the same books I've been reading for 40 years, trying to hang onto and branch out.