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?