It's 42 degrees and it's thundering and the rain is pouring down, and about twenty very wet women are jogging (slogging? bogging?) up and down the steep hill outside my window. Ick. I am happy to be dry and warm. I spent much of Saturday standing around in a grim almost-drizzle with my in-laws, watching or waiting to watch the senior dance projects at Bennington, one of which took place in a pool of water. I was reminded of the years I spent sitting on the sidelines of little-kid baseball games, grousing about how long six innings could actually last, internally cursing the slow and hapless pitcher, and wondering if I would have any non-frostbitten toes by the time the torment ended. Who knew that the same thing could happen at a modern dance extravaganza? [This is not to denigrate either baseball or dance, which are both beautiful. And I would stand in the rain all day for the privilege of watching my son perform.]

Anyway, there's much to be said for a thick red bathrobe and a cup of hot coffee and an enthusiastic iron radiator.

I wonder what you thought of the poem I linked to yesterday. A friend of mine commented that it sounded like a compressed sonnet to her, an observation that I found very exciting because this was not a conscious construction strategy . . . although, oddly enough, the poem does mention the word sonnet. I do know that I wrote it at a time when my son was infatuated with the Hamilton soundtrack and was also listening to a fair amount of Kendrick Lamar, so my air was suffused with hip-hop rhymes and cadences. I also know that I had Macbeth on my mind.  But the sonnet structure--which I can now absolutely track in the piece--arrived without my conscious volition. It seems that decades spent reading and copying out sonnets have affected my brain patterns. I think that's thrilling.