Yesterday I bravely (for me) invited a poet I hardly know to have coffee together, and we actually enjoyed each other's company, and I think we might do it again. So that is something. As you know I can have high anxiety around writers who seem to have everything together (networks, jobs, prizes), which is stupid of me but nonetheless real. So it felt like a step forward for me to be taking a step forward with her.

Plus, it rained all evening!--a beautiful, gentle, steady rain--and this morning the air smells of leaves and water.

I have been (maybe like you) pinned to this Ukraine business. Finally, can we hope? I feel such desperation to get rid of this wretched marionette and his thousand evil strings.

Why does the page lie on the table by the window? Why are the table deserted and the pen to one side of it? Why am I about to make an unwritten poem into this small biography of the silences it retreated into? 

--Eavan Boland, Object Lessons