Another foggy morning. Supposedly rain will be moving in this week, but I'll believe it when I see it. These fogs are closest we've gotten to wet for weeks. 

Yesterday was quiet. Paul spent the entire day in his bathrobe binge-watching a new season of some Netflix show. Tom worked at his desk. I sat on the couch and did some workshop prep and submitted my NPS manuscript to a couple of publishers; in-between times I folded laundry and baked bread and cleared out a few fading flowerbeds. For dinner I made seared tuna steaks (crusted with toasted cumin and mustard seeds, salt, and pepper; topped with fresh guacamole) alongside spoon bread and an arugula and marigold salad. We played cards and listened to our new wonderful baby Red Sox pitcher dominate the Atlanta Braves lineup--he's practically the only bright spot in a dreadful season.

Today I guess I've got to do the housework and the grocery shopping. I'm also going to take a bike ride this morning--return a library book and then tool around on the quiet cemetery roads.

I'm feeling a little melancholy today--not the never-ending dread so much as a more elegiac seasonal sadness . . . garden fading, leaves turning, nights moving in. A month from now I'll be imagining snow.

Here's a little poem.

Abandoned Country Song

 

            1972

 

Dawn Potter

My darling has left for the city,

And my heart is as bleak as a barn.

Now I blink at the pattern

Of dust that once mattered

And can’t tell which memory I mourn.

[from Chestnut Ridge (Deerbrook Editions, 2019)]