Just as I was accustoming myself to unemployment, a small editing project dropped from the sky. So this morning I'll be back at it: paying off the chimney-sweep bill, the accidental-new-dress bill, the buy-copies-of-my-own-books-from-the-publisher bill, etc. First, though, I'll go for a walk. The humidity seems to have lessened, maybe because there's been no rain for three days in a row, and I want to check my secret chanterelle patches in the cemetery and watch the mockingbirds and the hawks, so busy with their duties among the headstones and trees.

Tonight I'll go out to the salon to write. This afternoon I'll bake a plum cake to bring along. This morning I'll hang clothes on the line. Such is my plan for my day. Perhaps the mockingbirds and the hawks will drop by to watch me.

I'm rereading Iris Murdoch's novel The Unicorn, and in it she reprints the lyrics of a ballad, which a quick Google search suggests has Manx roots. I don't remember noticing it before, but this time through the book, the words floored me.

O what if the fowler my blackbird has taken?

The roses of dawn blossom over the sea;

Awaken, my blackbird, awaken, awaken,

And sing to me out of my red fuchsia tree.

O what if the fowler my blackbird has taken?

The sun lifts his head from the lap of the sea--

Awaken, my blackbird, awaken, awaken,

And sing to me out of my red fuchsia tree.

O what if the fowler my blackbird has taken?

The mountains grow white with the birds of the sea,

But down in the garden forsaken, forsaken,

I'll weep all the day by my red fuchsia tree.