It's snowing quietly, pale dust on roofs and sidewalks, pale glimmer under streetlight. No passing cars mar the snow-sheened road. Windows are dark. Everyone seems to be asleep--except for me, except for Chuck, except, I'm sure, for the family two doors down with the brand-new baby.

Already on this dark morning I've been rereading poem drafts . . . two new ones over the past two days, one set in lake sunshine, the other on a midnight forest trail. My rereading is tender. It is weary. Brand-new babies demand everything.

The room is still. Two pots of rosemary cluster against a gray windowpane. A philodendron glints in a dusky corner. Last night's wood fire has burned down to ash.

In this silvery hour, my two poem drafts chirp and sigh. I run a finger down a margin, trace the thin space between stanzas, prick myself on a comma.

All around us, snowflakes drift slowly, slowly through taut air.

This week has bustled along. I'm surprised to see Friday arrive so soon, but here it is again, in all of its trash-day glory. Little Chuck is crunching his breakfast chow, I am drinking my modicum of black coffee, T is creaking around in the bed. Any moment now his feet will hit the floor and the morning show will begin.

I'll mostly be editing today, but I've also got some prep to do for next Saturday's Poetry Kitchen class, which will be a reunion session for Monson Arts and Frost Place alums. And with luck I'll find time to frame up another poem draft for the performance project. Those pieces are continuing to tumble into the world: I wrote a new poem yesterday, even in the midst of more pressing obligations. With each one, I feel like I'm opening a little window on an Advent calendar. "I wonder what I should say?" I ask myself as I peek behind the shutters, and suddenly an anecdote or an image shines in my thoughts, and a new draft asserts itself.

An interesting side-note is that the draft-blurts I'm writing with my Thursday night poets are awful and useless. In the past those blurts have been exciting starting points for new work, but right now they seem to have nothing to do with anything. My creative energy is coming from somewhere else, at least for the moment.

But so it goes. The Muse is a weirdo who shows up at the bar right before it's about to close and requests a complicated blender drink.

Sorry about the late post, but I had to get P to the bus station by 6 a.m., so the morning has been hectic. Finally, however, I'm getting my chance to slow down. The kitchen is clean, the floors are swept, the bins are empty, the clean laundry is folded, the first load of many loads of dirty laundry is churning, the bed is made, the kitten has breakfasted, my boys have been kissed goodbye, and I am at leisure to curl up in my couch corner with a cup of tea.

Our whirlwind trip to the north was excellent, on all fronts. The class went great, spending time with my kid is always the best, as is hanging out together with old friends in the homeland. The driving conditions were decent enough, and now I am home again for a spell--with a lot of obligations but also some quiet.

This morning I'll take a walk in wet fog, then dig into the big new editing project that showed up in my inbox while I was up north. I'll deal with the laundry mountain. I'll make a jelly roll with a friend's homemade marmalade, and I'll invent a poem prompt. Tonight I'll go out to write with my poets.

Hovering over me is a small raincloud of loneliness, the familiar small cloud that always thickens whenever I have to part from either of my children. Their company is such a delight to me, such a miracle.  But I'll be in New York next month; I hope to be in Chicago in May. Till then the small raincloud is a kind of comfort. A greening. A fragrance of soil and stone.

P wanted to do the driving yesterday, so I sat in the passenger seat and was mostly able to relax. I'm still not quite used to the idea that he can handle a car, though I know that in real life he regularly drives cargo vans all around NYC. He is 28 years old, and I should be used to the idea of him behind the wheel. But somehow I'm not.

Still, we made it safely, even easily, to the homeland and spent an excellent evening with our friends: venison for dinner, chat about canoes and snow and the people of our lives. P filled the woodbox. I unloaded a bag of treats from the city. The cookstove purred and clicked. The lamps glowed.

And now, in the dark outside the open window--silence. The north woods in January. The velvet of early morning. 

P arrived last night, and this afternoon we'll embark for the north country--first stop Wellington, to hang out with homeland dear ones; then tomorrow we'll teach together in Monson. I'm ready to get back into the classroom, though after yesterday's zoom meeting I'm also breathless about the prep that still needs to get done before that Florida residency. Yes, I wrote eight poems over the course of a week, but more must be written, and when will I have time to produce another rush of work?

There's no point in fretting about that today, however. I'm looking forward to hanging out with my kid this morning, looking forward to hanging out with our friends this evening, looking forward to class tomorrow. I know I've said it before, but team-teaching with my own son is extraordinarily gratifying. This will be our third iteration of the playwriting session; and though we (mostly he) tweak our plans and packet every year, we've honed a class that surprises the kids, engages them, and keeps them adventurous. P is a great natural teacher, and I hope he gets a chance to have his own classroom one of these days.

It's Monday morning, it's my back-to-work week, and I am starting it off right, with a pile of dirty sheets and towels and a washing machine that does not leak water all over the basement. Yesterday Tom discovered pinholes in the drain hose, made a quick trip to the hardware store, and voila: I am back in the laundry business. So today--a walk, a zoom meeting, housework, groceries, prepping for school, getting the guest room set up, and this evening P will arrive from Brooklyn, ready to trek north with me tomorrow.

I did end up watching the Bills-Jaguars game yesterday--a game so stressful that I had to keep walking out of the room. Midway through, P texted, "This is a rock fight," and he was right. I never like to watch anyone get hurt, but I especially hate to watch the Bills' quarterback get beat up. I think that's because I've been on his side since he was an awkward, full-of-talent, often-ridiculed, dingbat rookie, and that history has somehow triggered my motherliness. Even though he's now the reigning league MVP, seeing him get hit on the football field feels as upsetting as seeing my kids' friends get mashed during a high school soccer game.

In the end, the Bills did pull off a victory, though I wonder why I was happy because now I have to go through all that stress again next Sunday.

Otherwise, what is new? Mostly an awareness of transition. This week I'll pivot away from my private life, back into the world. I haven't been exactly housebound over the past couple of weeks, but the house and my own mind have certainly been my frame. I'm looking forward to what's next.

Chuck has been unable to let me sleep late. Before 5 a.m., both yesterday and today, he was sitting on my chest, patting my face with his paw and trying to lick my eyelids. Who can stay asleep with a cat licking their eyelids? Ugh.

However, I otherwise got a good night's sleep, so I will refrain from grouching at the enthusiast. He means well.

T and I had an enjoyable playday yesterday. The weather was weirdly warm, more like March than January, and we walked around town with our hats off, held hands as we slid over the icy patches, embarrassed ourselves with dreadful bowling scores, and dolled up for dinner. It was an excellent birthday party.

Now today we will return to the land of chores. He will argue with the still-leaking washing machine. I will work on some editing questions with an author. I plan to watch the Bills game this afternoon, unless it becomes too depressing. I'll probably keep reading Toibin's The Magician, though I have to say I'm not liking it as much as I've liked his other fiction.

This week the work snowball will start rolling downhill. First thing tomorrow morning I've got a zoom meeting about the conference faculty performance. In the evening my younger son will arrive from New York, and on Tuesday he and I will head north so that we can teach the Monson high schoolers together on Wednesday. At some point during the week a new editing project will arrive. The days will speed up, and the responsibilities will stack up, and I will be breathless and spinning, wondering if I'll ever write again.

So my production over this holiday hiatus has been a great boon. During this break I wrote eight new poems . . . eight! I also drafted the bulk of my conference teaching plans: brand-new conversation starters and prompts designed to fill full-day sessions--a lot of material. I worked on marketing stuff, I worked on upcoming online teaching stuff, I worked on co-teaching stuff with my son, I read books like a fiend. I solved (I hope) some niggling medical issues. I celebrated a big elaborate Christmas. I hosted a New Year's Eve party. I was a good pal to Tom. I kept the house clean and got interesting meals onto the table. I look back at the past month and I am amazed. What the heck?

I'm not sure why I've been able to buckle down so effectively in my private life, given the bombardment of national horrors. There's been no compartmentalizing: the horrors seep like spilled ink into my worries, into my dreams. I am 61 years old and my brain is sparking with energy and my chest is tight with distress, but I keep waking up, I keep getting to work. I don't know why or how.