After my class yesterday morning, T needed to run over to his job site and pick up some tools for his cupboard-door project. So I came along, and we took a side trip to one of the walking trails that wind along the Cape Elizabeth salt marshes--flat blue ponds among golden sedge; egrets, dazzling in their white plumage, peering up from solitary meals; low-tide odors shimmering in the brackish creek beds.

How I love marshes and bogs . . . water, sky, land entwined.

*

Now it's 37 degrees outside, a sharp, dark Sunday morning, a small wind scented with leafmeal and salt. I got nothing done in the garden yesterday afternoon, other than harvesting for dinner. I made a risotto last night: garlic, fennel, and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms sautéed with chopped ruby-red chard; then arborio rice stirred in, and ladles of hot Cornish hen broth, and finally parmesan. The red stems of the chard stained the rice a pale pink, so it was beautiful on the plate beside a spoonful of cranberry relish and a few slices of crisp kohlrabi. I was thinking as I cooked that a vegan version would be equally good: vegetable broth and a fillip of sharp olive oil before serving, to replace the cheese.

I'm up early today, but I have been sleeping through the night, which has greatly improved my state of mind. Today I'll putter among the garden chores I didn't do yesterday. I might drive down to the waterfront and investigate the offerings at the fish market. I'll keep reading Best American Short Stories, and I'll enjoy opening and closing the kitchen-cupboard doors, with their freshly installed knobs. (For the past few weeks we've been opening them by way of temporary tabs made of painter's tape: utilitarian but unpleasant.)

For now, though, I'll linger in front of the new wood fire that snaps and leaps in the stove. I'm drinking a luxurious second cup of black coffee. T is still asleep, the cat has just stalked up the stairs to join him, and I am gratefully untethered from clocks and schedules. Sunday stretches before me--a long slow amble, a bright carpet unrolling.

*

All of this quiet contentment is endangered, of course. The presidential election is a thousand-pound weight dangling over our frail skulls. Maine will likely swing Democratic. Certainly my district will, so in that sense my vote hardly matters. Yet I rushed out to vote early; trembling with urgency and desperation, I thrust my ballot into the box: "Here it is!" my inner voice shouted. "Quick, count me, count me!"

What else can we do, except beg to be counted?

*

London, 1802

 

William Wordsworth

 

Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour:

England hath need of thee: she is a fen

Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen,

Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,

Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;

Oh! raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart:

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life’s common way,

In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart

The lowliest duties on itself did lay.