I dropped off three 14-year-old girls in the rain to rake leaves, seriously pursuing their entrepreneurial odd-job endeavor, then parked my little silver Toyota along the road and walked.

November: the season when the cold clouds come down to your face. As a kid in New Hampshire, I remember this as the season when the stone wall behind our house no longer warmed up in the sun, and we had the delicious pleasure of playing outside in the dark — before dinner.

I walked up a dirt road I had never followed, then saw a sign about a marker. I followed small white squares through the woods, startling six deer with brilliant white tails, and found a marker for the colonist who cleared a farm, built a cabin, and planted orchards. 1789. Down a hillside, a stream murmured.

The marker was placed by his descendants, in 1930, on the original site of the cabin. Father of 11 children, I stood there — me, the rain-wet trees and sodden, fallen leaves, the pale gold apples yet on the gone-wild trees — and wondered, And what of his wife?

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.

― Mary Oliver

Calais, Vermont

Beneath a clutter of last winter’s sweaters and board games, I discover a few poetry books. We’ve lived in this house for two years (and three summers of gardens). This weekend has been tidying-up chores, inside and outside.

The garden flowers sing their holy colors hard, hard, these days — pink cosmos and zinnias, that tangle of nasturtiums, the ever-present small beings of marigolds, and the sunflowers — without whom Vermont autumn is unimaginable.

…We did not come to remain whole.
We came to lose our leaves like the trees,
The trees that are broken
And start again, drawing up on great roots;
Like mad poets captured by the Moors,
Men who live out
A second life….

— Robert Bly, from “A Home in Dark Grass”

I receive a request from someone I knew a long time ago asking me to do something for her. The request baffles me.

At the end of the day, reading The Dakota Towers with a purring car and the 13-year-olds whispering in the next room still deep in what they see as interminably long childhood, I suddenly realize what I want is an apology from this woman.

There it is, the utter inability of us humans (willful? not willful?) to understand each other. My cat, satisfied and sleepy, immeasurably wise — and happy — yawns and tucks his head against my shoulder.

Words matter. Actions matter.

Staring at the ceiling, I remember so many years ago, driving in Maine — lost as usual on Maine roads — delivering wedding favors I had made from our maple syrup. August, and my 2-year-old in the backseat was thirsty since we had run out of water.

But I hadn’t been lost after all. The pine-flanked twisting road ended at a lake and a wooden inn. I found the mother of the bride on the veranda with her friends. She admired my sweaty 2-year-old in my arms and offered us ice water and crackers in the shape of butterflies. My daughter was enchanted. I’ve never forgotten the stranger’s kindnesss.

Let’s go out
To see the snow view
Where we slip and fall.

— Basho