Minus 2 degrees this morning, with a stiff wind, which is practically balmy, according to my friend in Alberta, but was still cold enough to convince the poodle to beg to go back into the house halfway through morning chores. This says a lot about the misery of that wind because bossing chickens is the poodle's favorite hobby, and she also is a devoted acolyte of compost. Three out of five new-laid eggs were frozen, I had to jump up and down on the water buckets, and two pairs of gloves were about as warm as bare skin. It is not yet cold enough to make my eyeballs start to ice over, but the season's early.

And now back to the luxurious pleasures of wood heat. I do like an 80-degree living room on a minus-2-degree day. This morning I will begin an editing project for CavanKerry Press, which is publishing my next poetry collection and has since asked me to take on its copyediting load. Today's book is Jack Wiler's forthcoming collection, which is a particular honor. Jack was a CKP author who died this past fall after a long battle with AIDS, and the press wants to expedite this second book in hopes of having it ready by the anniversary of his death. Although I never met Jack, I did correspond with him and he was a close friend of my close friends. He worked often in the schools and was a visiting poet at the Frost Place Conference on Poetry & Teaching. His first CKP book, Fun Being Me, definitely belongs on the shelf labeled "eye openers for disaffected high school boys who think they hate poetry."