10/14/2026
Woke up at 3:15 this morning.
Didn’t make brooms because the sound of the footbrake scuttling across the floor might wake people up.
So, reading it is.
The rain picked up around 4:00 am.
At 4:30 the thunder cracked so loudly that car alarms went off. Then the rain eased to a soft drizzle before beating down again in heavy waves.
Now I can’t focus on reading because the wind and rain are driving away the words.
The kind of driving rain where you wonder the last time you caulked the windows on the West side of the house, and worry about the stray cat that hangs out in your yard.
A prickly, worrisome kind of rain that speaks to chores unfinished and the weight of responsibility.
A reminder that winter is coming…and that soon we will retreat for a while into shorter days, colder nights, and the kind of quiet introspection that makes me want to plan gardens, order seed, read more poetry, restart my sourdough endeavors, try to learn Gàidhlig again, reread Tolkien, research how to make lace, contemplate quilting, remember that I meant to try to grow crystals on an old book….
By 5:00 am the rain settled into the steady downpour variety. Still heavy, but decidedly less prickly. More of the hot-tea-soft music-and-early-morning-poetry kind of rain. Something familiar and comforting before morning forces the day upon me. Perhaps some T. S. Eliot, or Wendell Berry…or some Mary Oliver.
“Wild Geese"
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver, Dream Work
