Good morning, post-storm. Isaias arrived in a flurry . . . a wild churn of cloud, twists of downpour, trees whipping, air wailing . . . and then he vanished into Canada. In his wake: not too much damage, at least in my yard--a litter of twigs and small branches, a few broken flower stems, but the tomato stakes held strong and the sunflowers are still smiling. Our power didn't even flicker, though many people outside of Portland lost electricity. On the coast we got more wind than rain, and I'm wondering how inlanders fared, who got more rain than wind. I had to drive across town in the midst of the gale, to fetch Paul home from work, and only saw one tree down, though smaller branches were everywhere. [In case you were wondering: apparently people do not stop ordering pizza during a tropical storm. Paul had a busy night.]

Today: a quick bike ride this morning to see how the neighborhood's holding up after the storm; then home to edit and do some manuscript-consultation prep; then storm cleanup in the afternoon. Paul is cooking chicken wings for dinner tonight, so I'll have company in the kitchen. I'm still reading Blake and Nabokov, still not writing new poems, still never home alone. But the sweep came yesterday, so I have a clean chimney and wood stove. And the humidity has broken, so I don't feel as if my lungs are packed with wet paper.

Here's the opening of Jack Gilbert's poem "Burning (Andante non Trope)":

We are all burning in time, but each is consumed

at his own speed. Each is the product

of his spirit’s refraction, of the inflection

of that mind. It is the pace of our living

that makes the world available.