There's a thin blue sky this morning, the color of a husky's eyes. It's 3 degrees out there. Inside the cat is humped sweetly on his chair and I am sitting by the dark fireplace wishing I had enough firewood left to start a blaze now. In Harmony, on these cold mornings, that was always the first chore. But town life is different, so I am saving my last wood for evenings. I sometimes think these evening fires are what has reconciled me to living in the city. Spending a year in that apartment without a wood fire: it was like an empty place at the table. Firewood was such a massive part of our lives up north. Cutting, hauling, splitting, stacking, filling woodboxes, stoking the firebox . . . day in, day out; day in, day out. No matter what else was happening in our lives, we had to remember the stove.

My week of teaching every day is going well. The drive is long, but the roads are clear and fast, and the kids are cheerful and engaged. The residency ends next Tuesday, and then I'll be diving back into editing and beginning to seriously prep for my 24PearlStreet poetry class. If you're thinking of signing up for it, feel free to send me a note with any questions, ideas, or preferences. I want to create a workshop that's as useful as possible.

In the meantime: I'm reading Iris Murdoch's A Severed Head; cutting out a pattern for a shirt; keeping up with meals and errands and laundry; not writing much, given my current work schedule, but I can feel the words sifting and sighing in the dark. They're waiting for me.