The Herbert stanza I posted yesterday seems to have triggered me to begin writing a new essay, which is a relief because I haven't written anything new for weeks and also distressing because composing this essay is making me really sad. I spent much of my waiting-for-my-son-to-finish-track-practice time stretched out in the back seat of my car, where I sobbed over my laptop and hoped that the other kids' parents didn't think I was suicidal or something. If anyone had anxiously tapped on the window, I would have had to wail, "No, no, I'm just writing an essay," and I doubt that would have allayed their fears.

I might work on it again during this morning's track practice . . . after I prep myself for next Monday's K-8 teaching day, after I hammer out a few more copyedited pages, after I buy birdseed and grapefruit juice (grocery lists do supply peculiar biographical data).

Then home again . . . to laundry and bread baking and gardening, and then south to Waterville to host a poetry reading, and then north again, driving through the skunk-scented dark.

My God, what is a heart?
Silver, or gold, or precious stone,
Or starre, or rainbow, or a part
Of all these things, or all of them in one?

Please let the small words stay alive.