losing everything would have been a disaster (fire, the author’s deep fear, can engulf a building in five minutes – thirteen, we counted) and then once outside, realizing smoke in a neighboring apartment was turning to flames within the building no explanation why the threat of losing my worldly goods didn’t upset me as much as the basic ineptitude that causes delays like that to happen goodbye, manuscripts, notebooks, early drafts, letters, addresses . a writer’s constant fear  against the slow art itself, you know, civilly

the summer I thought we’d vacation out West we instead moved there to a new workplace just as I’ve dreamed the parking brake won’t hold the car in place some things don’t change that much and once again, there goes our hard-earned cushion, this time, six steps later, it’s New England and a more faithful spouse, all the same, just as we paid off the barn-repair loan, I was mistaken to think I saw the end coming

what did I know beforehand?) unpacking, making each room orderly, scrubbing and waxing floors, vacuuming, reorganizing files, going to the laundry with all my woven possessions, running errands, and without warning things fall into place

cleansing is more than mere output or holy observance to be done would require not noticing dampness along the wall disclosing leakage what can I then breach anew or newly demolish in the storm churning up from some underside of an altar or anvil? air thickens and clears as a matter of practice with desiccated houseflies or wasps or shards of chimney brick in the attic

yes, you know what they say of bread and roses (well, that gilt-edged smoked gouda’s still in the refrigerator, a rare indulgence from last week’s after-inquest) and legitimate French bread (the stuff in this town only is regular dough inside; what a delight to know immediately with the first knife stroke that THIS was the genuine crusty article) (dinner tonight onion soup with gobs of cheese toasted under the broiler, leafy salad, and baguette slices heaped with Vermont butter. if she’d only been with me) Parbleu, this is weird!

instead of sleeping late as planned, awoke about 8, brewed coffee, stared at the penicillin growing inside my refrigerator, and returned to bed, hoping to figure out what to do the rest of the day eventually showered but went back to the prostrate meditation then launched into one of those days of starting on one pile, jumping to something else, jumping to something else, then realizing I’d done nothing with the first pile or my routines so I finally escaped down along the river to check on ripples and wildlife, at least anything that’s moving besides traffic

it’s autumn when the nine-volt battery for my clock radio keeps time in a power outage so the alarm will go off when it’s supposed to rather than umpteen hours later died in the tropical heat wave during my absence and the warning light kept driving me nuts so I walked to the corner grocery for a replacement and on the trek home stopped at the farm market and picked up a quart of fresh cider full of Vitamin C (how rational!) overlooking the windy interplay of sunlight and clouds just down the street of shape notes with the earlier version of “Morning Star” lyrics

while strolling crushed-shell pathways and boardwalks in an indigenous archive of Florida, the elder child of the eldest child from Ohio returns to an aviary with its two injured bald eagles and several owls and large hawks before all this hovering, the anticipation, the tentative rediscovery of some way of pleasing each other, the way sons do, step by step, in feathered conversation with an occasional flight, mostly