It is a dark, strangely warm morning. I am washing sheets and thinking about last night's dreams, which were all about grocery shopping. I was pushing a cart through one of those enormous supermarkets, with aisles as wide as living rooms and ceilings as high as cathedrals. In the only vignette I can recall at all clearly, I was in the produce section, navigating among spotlit faux-crates of round beige food: honeydew melons, perhaps, or giant parched grapefruits, or waxy rutabagas? I don't think I had anything at all in my cart. Mostly I remember the lighting. It was like stage lighting, dramatic and portentous but not at all secretive. It was also like bad fluorescent lighting in seminar classrooms, the kind of brilliance that does everyone a bad turn. Yet I wouldn't call this an anxiety dream. I didn't worry about cereal boxes falling on me, nor was I pursued by villains on a mart-cart, nor did I discover I'd forgotten to get dressed before going to the store, nor did I have to navigate any motorized vehicles by means of a string. No doubt, my subconscious was up to something disreputable, but my only memory is garishly lit tedium.

Fortunately, when I woke up, I remembered that in real life Teresa had sent me another note: "How as poets we are all in the business of re-inventing seems much more important than whether we are 'finely educated' or 'accessible' or where we live or how we earn money (or don't)."

The business of re-inventing. How can that phrase not lift your spirits?