We got zero trick-or-treaters last night, which was not a surprise, given our unwelcoming front-door situation. I did make an attempt to encourage kids to the side door, but the light's not all that visible from the road, and the entry is tucked way down the driveway behind two vehicles and a pile of construction debris. So it's no wonder the kids didn't notice us-- though even on a good year, this end of the street doesn't attract a lot of trick-or-treaters. I don't know why, as the neighborhood looks like a stereotypical little-kid Halloween paradise.

Chuckie is very confused by the time change, so mixed up that he hasn't even been able to eat his breakfast. I agree with him: it is odd to be writing to you in daylight. Outside, the air is cold and still. November is upon us, with a sudden simplicity of sky and branch.

Yesterday I may have finished the Sappho project, which I am going to stop calling the Sappho project and refer to from now on by its actual title, Awake at the Olympus, thirty-nine pages of linked poems about a family that is both myth and flesh. Three people have read in-process versions of the draft so far, and one of them is my younger son. A kind of cinematic fairy tale, he tells me. Yes. My imagination is filled with the imagery of noir movie sets, and yet, because of my language obligations (every poem contains every word, or a sonic imitator, of one particular Sappho fragment), I can't help but accept the mythic overtones.

For copyright reasons, I won't share the fragment translation here, but I can give you the eleven required words in alphabetical order:

arms

come

daughters

graces

here

like

of

pure

roses

with

Zeus

Some words, like of, are almost invisible in the poems. Some, like Zeus, are flashing lights every time they appear. Some, like pure, are trickily invasive. Yet on the whole these poems have not been a struggle to write, and that's because graces and rose immediately morphed into Grace and Rose, sisters who developed distinct characters and became my emotional through-line.

I don't quite know what to do with myself now, or what to do with this manuscript. I guess I'll do nothing, for the moment anyway. The past few months have been full of surprise, poem-wise. First there was that crown of sonnets. And now this. I wonder what will happen next.