Dark huddles over the neighborhood, punctured by scattered squares of window light. It's a cold morning, the last day of October, deer season, and in Harmony I might have overheard a rifle shot or two, even before sunrise.

I never was a hunter; I've never even held a gun. Still, I can't help but notice that a large family might survive comfortably on the fat squirrels that overrun this part of town.

I've finished rereading A. S. Byatt's The Children's Book, and have just started rereading George Eliot's Middlemarch. I hope to work on a poem today. I hope to walk in the cemetery, tear out the rest of the arugula in my garden, get a paycheck in the mail, and scrub the kitchen sink. I hope a few dressed-up kids show up at the front door this evening looking for candy.

Here's a poem from 1803 that feels a bit like a poem for 2018. Godspeed, October.

October, 1803 

William Wordsworth 

These times strike monied worldlings with dismay:
Even rich men, brave by nature, taint the air
With words of apprehension and despair:
While tens of thousands, thinking on the affray,
Men unto whom sufficient for the day
And minds not stinted or untilled are given,
Sound, healthy, children of the God of heaven,
Are cheerful as the rising sun in May.
What do we gather hence but firmer faith
That every gift of noble origin
Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath;
That virtue and the faculties within
Are vital,—and that riches are akin
To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death?

Hello, hello-- I apologize profusely for the long delay in posting, but my geriatric computer went into the hospital, and this similarly geriatric blog platform did not allow me to post from my phone. I hope that most of you got the explanatory messages I left in comments or on Facebook.

In any case, I'm back now, just in time to let you know that I have a reading tonight at Space Gallery in downtown Portland at 7 p.m. Maybe you can come. The theme is "Migrations" and is part of a larger project organized by the Maine College of Art. This morning I combined through my stacks looking for pieces that fit the topic . . . thinking about my Chestnut Ridge immigrant poems but also some of my pieces about leaving Harmony. I'm looking forward to listening to what the other readers will share.

I've been on the road, during these days of blog silence: a quick trip west to see the amazing college drama production that my son assistant-directed, and to celebrate his 21st birthday . . . and to watch the Red Sox win the World Series while sitting a bar full of what appeared to be Yankees fans. That was strange.

I know we need to get back to RIII, and I'll aim to post the next assignment later in the week, after I catch up on other computer-related stuff.

. . . and just like that, I fell down the writing well again.

Yesterday, I finished--finished--a three-page epistolary poem titled "A Listener Sends Six Letters to God, in Autumn." I emphasize the finished because the poem had only been a half-baked meandering draft, composed last week during one late-afternoon sitting and then left to its own devices. A friend read the fragment and suggested the epistolary idea, but without any specific instructions. So I did nothing for a week; I didn't even think about the draft. And then, in a morning, I called it up, and it rearranged under my hands and became its final self.

I don't know why the task felt so obvious--not easy, but clear. This is the great mystery of the writing zone.

So today, perhaps there will be another poem. Or perhaps, instead, I will tear out frost-bitten cosmos and dig up dahlia tubers.

But what is happening to our country?

The cat is curled in his chair. Tom is clicking cup against saucer. The household hums with its quiet electrical secrets.

Rain this morning, a winding-down of last night's steady pour. I hear the drops tapping on the panes, and through the darkened windows I see reflections of wet on the invisible street.

Yesterday I returned an edited manuscript to the author, so now, while I wait for the next project, I have a day or two to spend on my own work. I hope--I believe--I can rethread my summer needle. The unwritten poems feel alive, available, as if they're waiting for me to uncork the bottle or rub the lamp.

Look at this clutter of metaphors flying off the page already! But, really, I don't think it's glibness so much as a froth of imagining.

I've been thinking lately about persistence--how it intersects with solitude, and imagination, and skill. Of course, there's more than one way to conceive of persistence. There's the boxer comparison, for instance--getting punched in the gut, and falling down, and then getting up, and taking the punch again. There's also persistence as an endless question: "But what if . . . ? But what if . . . ?" And for a writer, persistence might mean the simple act of throwing words into space--not just now and then, not just under the persuasion of a mentor, but because throwing words into space has become an urgency of the body and the mind.

Persistence is recklessness.

Richard III: Conversation (Act 2, Scenes 3 & 4)

RIII readers: It's time to post your character descriptions in the comments. In the meantime, I will chatter a bit.

* * *

The end is in sight with my editorial project. It's been hard work and, like writing, has required much solitude. I realized yesterday that I can go for days without speaking to anyone other than Tom. Because this is a town, I do at least lay eyes on other people--during walks, even just staring out the window--which is more than I can say for Harmony . . . though of course my household was larger then.

It's looking now as if my teaching schedule will mostly be winter- and spring-based. Autumn is the lone time. But I did have house guests this past weekend. And I do have a reading next week, part of an event called "Making Migration Visible: Traces, Tracks & Pathways."  And I will see family this coming weekend. And I am getting my hair cut today. So at least I have the memory and prospect of speaking.

Do not think I am complaining. Home is one of my favorite places to be, especially now that I have one again.

Downstairs a batch of sheets is rolling and tangling in the dryer. Upstairs I am putting away clean dishes and making coffee and trying to figure out why only a few of the registers are shooting out hot air. It's a cold dark Monday morning.

Glancing up across the driveway, I can see into my neighbor's lit apartment window: red India-print cloth tacked up against a white wall; a hump of clothing hung over the corner of a closet door. For all I know she is looking down through my naked windows at me, wrapped in my red robe, typing away. Neither of us seems too concerned about curtains.

Flowers are blooming bravely inside the house, but the shadows are hiding the frost-damage outside. The season is dying. Yet later, when the sun rises, clouds will swirl against blue; the breeze will tug at the roots of my hair. It will all feel like life.

It's been a busy weekend of house guests and gallivanting and staying up too late. But yesterday morning, while they were sleeping, I did find time to yank out my frost-nipped scarlet runners and the endlessly productive eggplant. I harvested the last of the lettuce and planted my garlic, discovered a couple of overlooked carrots, and did some weeding in preparation for flower-bulb planting. Tonight we're supposed to get our first hard frost, so I know I'll soon be digging up dahlia tubers and ripping out the rest of the cosmos and nasturtiums. Then the garden will be down to leeks, chard, kale, and hardy salad greens.

For now, though, I'm sitting here in the Sunday morning dark, on the grey couch, against a bright pillow, under a circle of lamplight. The furnace is humming to itself. The mantel clock is ticking. Various men are snoring gently in their various beds. Outside, the sky is just beginning to blue; and across the street one shaded upstairs window glows.


Immortal Autumn

Archibald MacLeish

I speak this poem now with grave and level voice
In praise of autumn, of the far-horn-winding fall.

I praise the flower-barren fields, the clouds, the tall
Unanswering branches where the wind makes sullen noise.

I praise the fall: it is the human season.
                                                               Now
No more the foreign sun does meddle at our earth,
Enforce the green and bring the fallow land to birth,
Nor winter yet weigh all with silence the pine bough,

But now in autumn with the black and outcast crows
Share we the spacious world: the whispering year is gone:
There is more room to live now: the once secret dawn
Comes late by daylight and the dark unguarded goes.

Between the mutinous brave burning of the leaves
And winter’s covering of our hearts with his deep snow
We are alone: there are no evening birds: we know
The naked moon: the tame stars circle at our eaves.

It is the human season. On this sterile air
Do words outcarry breath: the sound goes on and on.
I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone.

I cry to you beyond upon this bitter air.