When you spend hours sitting in hard chairs in an unheated barn, the weather becomes a storyteller, a bone scientist, a raven. Poems glitter on tongues; a shiver is the skin's applause.

The week has been cold and damp in Franconia, New Hampshire, and then yesterday our chill was punctuated by a burst of modest sunshine. Poets stripped down to one sweater instead of three. There were epiphanies everywhere.

You'll note that I'm not discursive today. I expect I'll be more so after I get home. Right now, in the midst of it all, what I can say to you is that the Frost Place is doing its work on me, again, again, as it always does. Ghosts argue and chipmunks rattle. Bears lurk among the lupines. Phoebes alight on the stair railings and flip their sharp tails.

Give us this day our daily bread.