Today, it's raining.

 The high today will be 76 degrees. It feels like fall. I know it's early August, but everything within me longs for autumn. I know we have two months of heat remaining, but it's so easy to imagine that today is October, that today I will put on a sweater, that today I will walk among the fallen leaves.

So in honor of October-that-is-not-here, I'll share this poem ... again.

October

by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

Tomorrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild

Begin the hours of this day slow.

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know.

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away;

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!

For the grapes' sake, if they were all.

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost.

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost --

For the grapes' sake along the wall.

There are many elegant poems whose every word seems wondrously and perfectly placed, but to me, I think this is the most perfect poem for subject, rhythm, technique, and effect.

The rain is not insignificant. My chicken pen is a mass of soggy mud, and the hens don't know where to go, to get their little feet out of the wet. Their feathers droop with sogginess. Brownie is being broody and is in the final days of sitting on a clutch of a dozen eggs. She is the only dry hen, hunkered in her broody box with her feathers fluffed over the eggs.

Beau and I are on the couch watching the Olympic runners give it their all in Tokyo. It's a day to stay inside, so I think I'll go back to painting, which I've taken a break from for a couple of weeks. Instead, I've been weaving and making youtube videos, which is creative in its own right.

It's been exactly a year since Adam was diagnosed with his illness and we began this long road of treatment. This morning he is at the internist's getting lots of blood drawn for various tests. One of them will determine whether he is heading into remission and can come off of his immunosuppressant medication. (Most organ transplant patients take between 1500-200 mg of this med each day; Adam takes 4500 mg daily.) We are very eager for him to be off this drug, and give his immune system a chance to work again. He has been full of so much anxiety lately regarding all this. We hope for good news.

But today -- I'm loving the sound of rain outside, and a snug, dry house inside. Time for a good, hot cup of tea and some time in my studio. I may paint. But I may stare out the window.