I am standing at my desk, staring out into the raw and drizzly day, thinking vaguely of laundry and groceries, thinking more pointedly of the books I'm reading--the Inferno, the Hughes-Plath bio--glad for warmth and lamplight but also restless, with a sense of being emotionally scraped, like a knee on gravel.

Downstairs the cat is complaining to Tom about the weather. Up here, all is silent, except for the click of my fingers on the keyboard and the drip of rain from the roof.

I don't know what I'll be doing today: I could veer in any direction. I have a poem draft to worry over. I have clothes to fold. I have sidewalks to tread.

My good master said, "Crouch down behind
that jagged rock so it won't seem you're here.
You'll need that shield to hide from them." 

--from Dante's Inferno, Canto XXI, translated by Susan Mitchell