We're slowly easing into setting up house (nothing on the walls yet though) and holiday decorating around here, gradually adding layers of Christmas cheer and trying to talk ourselves into feeling like it's almost December. Mostly I'm just feeling very grateful for the ordinary joys of my life right now and for a few minutes to just sit and be. A raise of the glass to Billy Collins who, as always, captures the sentiment perfectly:

I Ask You

What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake. 

But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.

No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall
and the way these three candles--
each a different height--
are singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt--
frog at the edge of a pond--
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.
~Billy Collins 

. . .

p.s. Well, my short, comments-off experiment is over, folks. It felt too much like I was prattling on at you with my hands over my ears (lalalala). I discovered I like the back-and-forth exchange (or at the very least the possibility) rather than shouting out into the universe with my ears closed. Less megaphone, more conversation.  Comments feature, activate. 

I really do love the emails, though, so thank you for those and feel free to write anytime.
basic.annie@gmail.com