The blog-platform glitchiness continues, so please don't be alarmed if you don't hear from me: it will likely be because I can't get into the site. However, I seem to have won the battle today, and so here I am, on the last day of August, still hewing to my routine: rise at 5 a.m. let the cat out, put away the clean dishes, make the coffee, bring T a cup, sit down with mine, start writing to you, let the cat in, go back to writing to you.

Yesterday I shipped my little editing project, sat through a staff meeting, messed with a poem, fought with some job paperwork, underwent some housework. Today will be even less demanding. I've got a new editing project on the way, but it hasn't arrived yet, so I'll have to find other occupations. I'll probably freeze some kale, probably work on poems, probably check in on Rilke, probably talk to my sister, probably wrestle with more job paperwork. I'll take an early-morning walk and do some mushroom foraging. Tonight I'll go out to write. It won't exactly be a vacation day, but it will be mine to shape.

The days are getting notably shorter. It's dark at 5 a.m., and the scent of the air is changing. Outside, a breeze ruffles the aging leaves. Next week our firewood delivery will arrive: a cord of green wood, destined for the woodshed, which is presently packed with a cord of dry wood that now needs to go into the basement. A big chore lies ahead: our annual wood-moving days. There's the old adage: firewood warms you twice. And there's my private adage: firewood is the story of my marriage.

No firewood necessary today, though. On the last day of August, in the little northern city by the sea, a thick breeze swirls up from the bay, waltzes through the open windows. Walnuts clonk onto the roof of my neighbors' dead car. Jack the tuxedo cat trots officiously down the shadowy sidewalk. Tomatoes ripen and zinnias preen. And I run up the stairs, taking them two at a time, like a long-legged kid.