“let your shadow lengthen on the sundials” (Rilke)

When you think the world can’t get worse, it gets worse. The news yesterday, this morning: in the night I heard gunshot and in the haze of my sleep, I thought, Oh, they’ve arrived here too.

We ate our Thanksgiving dinner last evening, as the light was fading. No turkey but duck legs roasted with shallots and because the oven was on, I roasted all kinds of vegetables too: a pan of carrots, our little Gill’s Golden Pippin squashes, our red potatoes, onions, and branches of rosemary; and a pan of brussels sprouts, small purple-shouldered turnips from the Sechelt Farmers Market, flecked with red onion and back bacon nuggets. John picked greens and then sliced an Anjou pear, an avocado, drizzled with a bright dressing. The wine was a white Côtes du Rhône, sort of floral and peach. For dessert, no, not pumpkin pie but a lime and Meyer lemon tart, kind of retro but delicious. I was thankful to be able to sit at the table and look at the view I’ve loved for more than 40 years in the best of company, sipping wine from the Waterford glasses John gave me for my 50th birthday, 18 years ago. Somehow they’re still intact, like us.

After the summer’s yield, Lord, it is time

to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials

and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

Yesterday I swam in the lake but this morning it’s raining, chilly, and I think I’ll spend the day in Easthope, the world of the novel I am slowly writing. In Easthope, it’s around 2015 and there’s no war, no Covid, not yet, and Joe Stanton is playing guitar and singing in the pub on Saturday night. If you look for long enough, you’ll see orcas and humpbacks in the inlet. On fall evenings, walking back from the pub, you smell dry fir burning in the woodstoves in the houses tucked into the blackberry thickets. It is very far from everything.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.

Direct on them two days of warmer light

to hale them golden toward their term, and harry

the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.

The days, the weeks, the months are unspooling now towards winter. We’re beginning the mornings with small fires, we’ve brought most of the plants into the sunroom and greenhouse, disturbing a few sleeping treefrogs as we lift the pots. Last night John saw a mouse race across the living room carpet, brought in by the cat. This morning the trap is set, the leftovers safe in the fridge. Leaves were swept from the decks but the wind overnight has loosened more. Some of us have enough, too much, and some nothing at all. Not even hope. Today I am thankful for my life and will try a little harder to spread its plenitude wide.

Whoever’s homeless now, will build no shelter;

who lives alone will live indefinitely so,

waking up to read a little, draft long letters,   

and, along the city’s avenues,

fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.

Note: the poem is “Day in Autumn” by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Mary Kinzie.