Here I lie, on the bed in the little downstairs room at Robert Frost's house. The curtains puff in and out, in and out. The fan flutters. Tourists squeak up and down the stairs beyond my closed door.

Siesta time, after a long day, always the hardest day: new people, a new dance. I chose a difficult poem this year, Frost's "The Master Speed," a poem that in some ways is hard to love. But the dance itself was love, and the dance was easy to love: the conversation, in and among and through, this curious artifact, the poem.

So now here I lie, on the bed in the little downstairs room. The breeze brushes my ankles, lifts the edges of my hair.