The cat is curled in his chair. Tom is clicking cup against saucer. The household hums with its quiet electrical secrets.

Rain this morning, a winding-down of last night's steady pour. I hear the drops tapping on the panes, and through the darkened windows I see reflections of wet on the invisible street.

Yesterday I returned an edited manuscript to the author, so now, while I wait for the next project, I have a day or two to spend on my own work. I hope--I believe--I can rethread my summer needle. The unwritten poems feel alive, available, as if they're waiting for me to uncork the bottle or rub the lamp.

Look at this clutter of metaphors flying off the page already! But, really, I don't think it's glibness so much as a froth of imagining.

I've been thinking lately about persistence--how it intersects with solitude, and imagination, and skill. Of course, there's more than one way to conceive of persistence. There's the boxer comparison, for instance--getting punched in the gut, and falling down, and then getting up, and taking the punch again. There's also persistence as an endless question: "But what if . . . ? But what if . . . ?" And for a writer, persistence might mean the simple act of throwing words into space--not just now and then, not just under the persuasion of a mentor, but because throwing words into space has become an urgency of the body and the mind.

Persistence is recklessness.