This day is unlike any other we have had a long while.

I wrote that in October, but it can apply to any day.

That October day: After days of tranquil mild weather, when the landscape is so achingly beautiful, and fall transforming itself to a summer that still lingered, it rained in a winter’s way. In Maine, they are expecting snow. Here, on the Cape of Cod, the balmy warmth of the day gave way to grey and drizzle, the kind that brings up images of salty sailors in yellow fishing gear, the loneliness of lighthouses, and a vacant fog. My throat itches, as if the change in weather heralded the end of reliable health for the sniffles of autumn.

I feel a pull, a desire to nap, eat honey and hibernate, and wake refreshed to my own spring step.

This day, meant for oyster crackers and warm soup.

Any day, soup.

And any day knowing that happiness is a pursuit, a possibility to be worked at, and harder still is a settling of self. An acceptance of what and where one is.

Here below is To Autumn by John Keats:

(copied by the Poetry Foundation website)

(And a thank to the WordPress happiness agent to helped me today.)

To Autumn

by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; 

Conspiring with him how to load and bless 

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; 

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, 

And still more, later flowers for the bees, 

Until they think warm days will never cease, 

      For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells. 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? 

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, 

   Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: 

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 

   Steady thy laden head across a brook; 

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, 

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— 

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; 

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft 

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.