It's a cold morning, 45 degrees, and the winds from Hurricane Fiona are rippling along the coast. All night long the air rushed and sighed, and this morning the dog walkers clutch caps and and coffee cups, as the dogs lift their muzzles into the breeze.

I had a restless night, then slept a bit late, and am now trying to tamp down a headache but mostly feeling pretty much okay. I've got to work this morning, doing a zoom session for the Maine Poets Society, but I'm hoping to get outside eventually and tear down another patch of worn-out garden.

I did my exercise class yesterday, went for a walk with my neighbor, mowed grass, and did not take a nap; it seems that my energy is climbing back to its pre-Covid level, despite lingering fog, taste, and sinus issues. And even they are better than they were. At my desk I prepped for the Monson class, whittled down the editing stack, worked on Frost Place scheduling; and today I'll be talking poems all morning. I'd say I'm 90 percent myself again.

Of course there's the sad news about Hilary Mantel. Those Cromwell novels are among the best historical fiction ever written, and I feel very lucky to have stumbled into them, and to have learned so much from Mantel about the subtleties of setting and dialogue, and how to use them as portals.

In a couple of weeks I'll turn 58, creeping closer and closer toward my next decade. At 70 Mantel was not so much older than I am: with a body of work, and I have a body of work, and she died in the midst of writing, and likely that's how I will die too. And I think, Godspeed, that's not such a bad way to go.