Because my birthday is on Monday, today is the day I'm celebrating with Tom. This morning we'll go out to breakfast at our favorite diner, then drive down to our favorite bird sanctuary and wander among the salt marshes and along the beach. Then home, and home stuff--for me, that will mean finishing the firewood stacking and maybe I'll doze in front of a football game--and eventually T will grill scallops for dinner. Low-key excitement, for sure, but speckled with the little things that have shaped our life together.

Here's a poem from the new book, which sums up how I've been feeling lately, at this point of ritual transition, at this hiccup in time--

in myself I am

 

not much to write

home about not much to remember

 

when you pass me on the road I

smile and drop my eyes it is easy

 

to be invisible I listen

for the sounds of love a passing 

 

train the dark autumn 

rain splashing in the gutters

 

squirrels and chickadees

flitting past my feet as if I were

 

a lamppost or a coffin

there is no world like one 

 

that does not know you live in it

no age not dipped

 

in shadow and I am a scant

weight a brevity you

 

would not hear me whisper

in the night would not recognize

 

my shoes in the hall I am

the bronze in the snow the steed

 

beneath the general the

spider who will not weave

 

in spring and all the while

the clamor of the city rises

 

like a broken waltz trucks

bang past on the freeway

 

gulls scream in the parking lots

and I unseen slip along the potholed

 

streets bare-headed humming

a small song only I can hear

[from Dawn Potter, Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, 2024)]