For various reasons yesterday's class felt like an adventure in improvisation, but I think it went well enough: participants wrote three drafts in two hours, read and talked about poems from China and Burundi, thought about sound and time and transitions and structure and geography and memory. Afterward I did eat an entire bag of potato chips in the car, but fortunately that kind of lapse only happens about once a year.

Today Tom is still sick, I'm still coughing up crud. Although there's a shimmer of snow on the ground, temperatures are forecast to rise into the mid-50s today, and I will be planting peas and greens.

It feels good to have a sunshiny weekend at home ahead of me. On most afternoons this past week, I've spent an hour or so in the windy cold, moving stones, laying paths, raking leaves, pruning herbs and roses, piling sticks-- all for the sake of sun and warmth and finally getting seeds into dirt.

                            O love
open. Show me
my country. Take me home. 

--from Wendell Berry's "Homecoming"