5 a.m. Under the streetlight, ropes of fog twist against the blue dark. Cicadas creak but otherwise the neighborhood is still--no cars, no birds, no footsteps.

Small tasks are ticking through my mind . . . sheets to wash and hang on the line, green beans to blanch and freeze, cucumbers to pickle . . . Bowls of tomatoes fill the counter, the garden tumbles into harvest, my thoughts are a litany of take-care, take-care . . . and now, very suddenly, the birds are awake: a pair of jays screeching, a crow jeering back, cacophony and complaint ripping into the blanket of quiet; and it is morning.

Yesterday afternoon I went to visit a friend in her new place, another diasporic central Mainer, shell-shocked in the lands of the south. I felt again my own bewilderment and sorrow, the grief of place.

That feeling lingers now--partly from the visit, partly as the natural elegy of summer fading to autumn . . . the land, even my tiny plot, singing its small song; the lands of my past rising up like clouds in my memory. 

But I tamp them down. It is all I can do. This morning I'll be back to my desk, and then in the afternoon I need to go into town for a Telling Room event, a book launch for the high school writers in the mentorship program I worked in last winter. The timing is awkward; I'm not sure I'll be able to get to my writing salon as well, but maybe I can figure that out. Midday I should probably deal with those green beans. They are coming in strong and threaten to overwhelm me.

The elegy and the chores intertwine. They are like the bean vines, delicate and grasping, fragile and impatient; strong enough for Jack to climb but liable to fail the Giant. I'm not sure which one I am.