Another cold, cold morning in Maine. The three pairs of gloves I wore didn't feel much warmer than bare skin, especially after one of the gloves froze to the hens' water dish.

Today is a good day to hope that somebody else will trudge out to fetch the mail.

It's also a good day to drink more coffee, which I haven't done yet because I have been busy being cold. When the temperature is this far below zero, a half hour outside feels like a full day's labor.

Hayden Carruth wrote in "If It Were Not for You":

The night winds reach

like the blind breath of the world

in a rhythm without mind, gusting and beating

as if to destroy us, battering our poverty

and all the land's flat and cold and dark

under iron snow

This is not exactly how I feel this morning. The sun is shining; the chickadees are quarreling. The air ripples with cold, but there is no real wind. Nonetheless, I recognize Carruth's sense of despair in the face of intense winter. There is nothing to do but endure. Yet that very experience of endurance brings one close to a comprehension of death.

Now I will go make that coffee I've been wishing for.

Stay warm, and don't forget to stoke the stove.