The temperature is close to zero here in coastal Maine this morning, but that's nothing compared to the midwest, or even to last winter. In arctic central Maine we certainly had plenty of experience with 30 below, but so far in Portland this year it's just been snow-rain-snow-rain and perpetual ice on the sidewalks.

I've been working on a few poems that are making me glad to be a writer . . . narratives moving in peculiar directions, lines colliding, sentences resisting clutter. I feel as if I am learning things. Probably, today, I should think about submitting them somewhere, but that's always the least interesting part of writing.

Tomorrow my high school residency begins, and that will upend my days into early March. I've still got four weeks to go in my online essay class, and I'm expecting a new editing project shortly. These new poems could be the last ones I write for a while.

In other news, I finished my apron and got it dirty making beef-mushroom soup, Yorkshire pudding, and beet and pumpkin-seed salad. I wonder what the next project will be.