Flowers in a darkened room, 5 a.m.

This morning the temperature is 57 degrees, far cooler than it's been for weeks, so chilly that I'm actually wearing a bathrobe. I'm not sure I've done that since June. I've pretty much forgotten what a long-sleeved shirt is, let alone a sweater. But last night's rainstorm broke the spell, and the little northern city by the sea has returned to its moderate ways.

Last night, after our dinner party, as Tom washed dishes and I dried dishes and we listened to the rain drip off the roof, I found myself wandering from little room to room, as I slowly toweled plate or glass, thinking idly . . . about how conversations morph from good manners to curiosity, how space holds and releases bodies, how flowers create shadows against painted walls . . .

What happens to a house that is quiet, then full of talk, then quiet again? Does the talk still linger in the vacant rooms, like wet air lurks in swollen doors and the covers of paperback novels?

Outside, a mourning dove performs her three-note lament: coo. coo. coo. Two runners thunk down the street, breath ragged, sneakers crunching sand. Daylight, pale as milk, slips through the maples, the ash tree; slides along the wet rooflines; fingers the shutters and doors. Alcott House, tidy, small, unfinished, unfolds itself to the morning.

Today--what shall I do today? The garden, I suppose; clothes on the line; books and a walk . . . any of this, yes, or something else entirely. The shape of the near future shimmers, familiar and mysterious.