Saturday, dark and cool. A fire in the stove. Hot coffee in my cup. I dreamed that Chuck was dreaming, and that I had access to the rolling receipt for the expense of what he was dreaming: $4,000 and counting. What might a little cat dream that would cost so much? Perhaps pushing crystal off counters or eating an expensive parakeet. The dream-within-a-dream did not divulge.

 

Hey, how about those Canadians and their pinch-hit grand slam? I suppose I ought to be rooting against the Blue Jays, given that they're divisional foes of the Red Sox. But I've seen so many of these players in their youth: the Jays' AA squad is the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, which regularly plays our Portland Sea Dogs. So I have been watching Vlad Guerrero and Bo Bichette since they were baby big leaguers and am feeling motherly pride in them.

This weekend will be my last restful one for a while. Next weekend I'll be teaching, the following one I'll probably be in Vermont, then I'll be teaching again, and then Thanksgiving will be upon us. So today and tomorrow I'm going to plant garlic, stow away hoses and outside furniture, continue cutting back my perennials, and otherwise try to catch up before the cold decides to arrive. The days won't just be chores: this afternoon T and I might go to a movie; tomorrow we're having dinner with friends.

I am looking forward to being outside, to the crunch of leaves under my old sneakers, to the satisfactions of mulching a garlic bed for winter. I like the sleepiness of autumn; I like saying, "Goodnight till spring."

Yesterday I finished a small editing assignment in the morning, then spent much of the rest of the day fine-tuning the Baron essay, reading The Waves, reading "Song of Myself." I baked an apple cake so that my neighbor and I could have a snack while we watched the new British baking show episode . . . the exact same cake I'd baked the day before for my poetry group, assuming I'd have leftovers for our tea party. That was not the case: apparently poets really like apple cake. The recipe is my tweaked version of a Joy of Cooking standard, and one of these days I'll type it up and share it with you because this cake is a winner: beautiful, delicious, and quick, especially if you possess one of those fine old-fashioned apple peeler-corer-slicers.

Once I finish this essay, I'm hoping I can transfer some of that momentum to poetry. I need to start thinking seriously about organizing a new collection; I need to start trudging through my own rough and rocky fields. I'll be on the road so much during the next few months. I've got so many work and family obligations. But surely the poems will come to me. Because I want them so much.