The light is turning the syrupy gold of honeyed baklava, huge trays of which, filo-encased nutfilled pastries sliced in plump triangles, are on perpetually fresh display behind the counter of a storefront Middle Eastern bakery on Atlantic Avenue. In the fifteen years that I lived around there - no, more like twenty in all - how many times did I buy a slice? Almost never. C'est dommage! Still, those luscious confections always enticed. But whenever I stopped in there I was always springing for a savory - pocketsize spinach-feta pie, lahambourgin (a slice of spicy ground lamb flatbread pizza), or from the cart out on the sidewalk when it was in operation, a fat pita sandwich stuffed with fried chickpea falafel, made healthy and green with mixed salad, tangy yogurt, and dashes of hot sauce.

Darling, my intuition - in combination with interpreting page hits as one might scattered tea leaves - is that you've managed it. I certainly hope so, I'm going with it. The thought elates me.

I'm amused by some of the page hits, which resonate with me but which I regard as statistical outliers (because not, I think, from you) that I toss out. In the last day two separate searches landed on my blog: involuntary celibacy serenely accepted and emma bovary is admirable. Ha! And ha! Serenely accepted? Serene like Alan Ginsberg (Howl) and the poem Do Not Go Gently into This Old Night are serene. But then again, if that is how I am however improbably perceived, then perhaps I have a future on the lecture circuit. Maybe I can debate Sarah Jessica Parker or somebody. Sex, Town, or Country: Pick One.

Darling, dreaming of you all the time. I've just taken a peach crostata out of the oven. The light has faded, it's squarely the blue gloaming now. Gwynnie's asleep on the rug near me. A young man croons beautifully on the radio now. I imagine the first time you and I kiss. I go over the sensation, how it goes down (is it as soon as the door shuts behind us? no it can't be - but when? so what brings you here), again and again in my mind.

It's not easy to feed snow geese. The last two days I've made a point to walk on the road whose high bank follows the creek. The three geese are there, along with ducks, in the audibly tumultuous creek, all rushing rapids in the middle, and pristine sheets of ice on the sides. I don't have an endless supply in the house, and D and I have rather refined tastes in bread, so I took a couple of slices of very good pecan-raisin levain from the freezer, thawed it in the toaster, bundled up in my red coat and scarf, and tucked the warm bread in my pocket. I set out for my walk, in semi-private moments - that is, out of eyeshot of houses and cars - going through my routine of arm exercises, all in sets of eight. I made my way down a deserted hill towards the creek, where at the bottom of the bluff the swanlike (long-necked, white) geese swam in the rapids. They look okay, maybe a bit thin, but they seem energetic. I tried to get their attention, which I did, they honked agreeably, and I tried flinging torn off bits down the bank, but I never was good at throwing, so the bread didn't make it down to them - and from their previous futile experience they had no interest in trying to make their way on webbed feet up an icy hill. The hurled morsels ended up scattered every which way. I suppose I made a few squirrels happy.

Today I set out with bread again, and there were the geese, they didn't even acknowledge me, didn't waste calories on the tease I now evidently represented to them, because I had seemed to promise bread but couldn't deliver. I thought about tossing bits from the main road that crosses over the creek, but then thought of casting bread upon the waters, a phrase whose meaning, honestly, I don't know, but it didn't seem like a good idea, yet another waste of perfectly good, not cheap bread, for geese that were a hundred yards away and unlikely to ferret it out before flying mallards could quack their way to it.

I hope so much that you are doing well, darling, and are simultaneously as exquisitely unhappy and happy as I am, my dearest gnat. We'll get a good balance going, for a spell. Always the l'heure exquisée, every moment I have with you. Love you.

XOXO