The long road begins here

 

And we'll be driving away toward the bridge at Mackinaw City tomorrow morning. Then we will spend the day driving across the Upper Peninsula. Rain is predicted and much of the autumn color will probably be over by now; but it is always a pretty drive and not overcrowded. I am so tired I make a typo about every other word. Maybe I can do better than this from the motel tomorrow night. . .I guess we will all find out!

I heard something hopeful about the end of the government shutdown a while ago, but there has been no followup, so it was probably premature as of 10:12 p.m. Eastern Time, Sigh.

I am leaving this copy of The Great Enigma here. So here is one more Transtromer poem. I was going to save this one for November, but I didn't quite wait that long.

November with Nuances of Noble Fur

It was the sky's being so grey

that makes the ground begin to shine:

the meadows with their timid green,

the plowed fields dark as black bread.

There is the red wall of a barn.

And the acres under water

like shining rice paddies in an Asia---

the gulls stand there reminiscing.

Misty spaces deep in the woods

chiming softly against each other.

Inspiration that lives secluded

and flees among the trees like Nils Dacke.

Tomas Transtromer, translated by Robin Fulton, The Great Enigma, New Directions, 2006, page 52.

And here is the link to Nils Dacke, the Swedish peasant leader of a serious revolution that almost toppled the king. I'd like to go to Sweden!