Home alone for a week I tromp past corners softened with tufts of dog hair. Lily's black and tan strands mix with the other dogs' chocolate and creamy clumps hiding under chairs and squeezed into crevices.

As if a breeze erased patterns in fine sand left by the usual morning sounds: kitchen faucet filing a coffee pot the shower a bedroom closet light switch and fumbling through heavy heeled work boots, I heard nothing this morning. The household's regular rhythms are gone. Blank and waiting are new habits and morning routines I'll etch for myself while Jerry and Erica are in Maine.

I can't remember what it's like to live alone. With company all the time my nerves just leave the field and sit injured on the sidelines. With the busy activity of other people's lives all jostling for space and time and attention in less than 700 square feet I lose touch with my own thoughts. Right then, my nerves jump in and protest.

Morning: I sit up in bed, kick my feet around until they connect with sandals I dropped there last night, tug the blankets into place and reach for the bedroom's glass doorknob. I know the brassy click I'll hear as its pieces turn in my grasp. I know the sticky sound of one piece of swollen and varnished wood letting go of another as I yank open the door.

Everything is as smooth as an ironed linen table cloth. The whole day has no pattern until I set foot into the living room, each step stitching my own tattoo that the dogs will eventually recognize.

Today, however, they follow me through the house wondering what to expect. No TV. Fewer lights. No talking. No phones. I straighten up the living room and clean up the coffee table. With the clutter gone I pick up the last pen and lay it perfectly parallel alongside a writing pad. At the same time I feel little things inside my head finding a symmetry.

In the woods today the leaves soil stones sticks shadows slopes tree trunks and limbs both thick and thin grew suddenly vivid and swelled with an aroma freed by rain and shocked loose by thunder. Soil sweetened warm air and moisture as the forest simmered, its living scent quickly beaded on my skin.

Three panting dogs and I ran through it like laughter.

Tonight the evening added darkness to the sky just a grain at a time; daylight lingered like thinning smoke.