Since yesterday morning the air has been shouting storm on the way, yet we've had no rain in Portland, not a drop, just swirling humid gusts, thick skies, incursions of fog, and the tense watchfulness that precedes hurricanes and blizzards: our animal selves alert--skin prickling, hackles aloft.

The storm creeps closer and closer. But though my week is packed with obligation, most of it centers at or close to home, so I won't have to drive far in the encroaching downpours. This morning I'll work on a manuscript job, catch up on reading for Poetry Lab, scurry out for a haircut, and then in the afternoon meet with Jeannie and Teresa. I'm rushing too fast through H.D.'s Trilogy, but somehow I got confused about homework timing, so here I am. I've also been immersed in Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, the first novel I've read by her. And I'm still making my way through my fat Collected Grimm. The swirl of ominous words is intersecting with the swirl of ominous weather: I'm unsettled, my feathers all awry.