. . . and just like that, I fell down the writing well again.

Yesterday, I finished--finished--a three-page epistolary poem titled "A Listener Sends Six Letters to God, in Autumn." I emphasize the finished because the poem had only been a half-baked meandering draft, composed last week during one late-afternoon sitting and then left to its own devices. A friend read the fragment and suggested the epistolary idea, but without any specific instructions. So I did nothing for a week; I didn't even think about the draft. And then, in a morning, I called it up, and it rearranged under my hands and became its final self.

I don't know why the task felt so obvious--not easy, but clear. This is the great mystery of the writing zone.

So today, perhaps there will be another poem. Or perhaps, instead, I will tear out frost-bitten cosmos and dig up dahlia tubers.

But what is happening to our country?