So: I wrote a pair of drafts over the weekend, and spent hours talking deeply about poetic craft, the work of two major poets, how attention to their work reveals our own artistic histories. It was indeed a retreat, a respite, a circle of ease and intense feeling. I am so grateful to the participants who entered into this virtual space with me.

And now it's Monday again, and I'll climb back onto the editing train, with my new drafts tucked under my hat. I am tired but also energetic, as if I've come back into possession of myself.

I've got bread to bake and plants to water, sheets to wash and sauce to freeze. The little errands swell, but the poem drafts are alive and waiting for me.

And, in the meantime, while I was writing and reading and talking, my boys were outside making a surprise for me. "Look out the window," they said when I stepped out of the Zoom room for lunch, and I saw a giant wrapped birthday present sitting in the driveway. When I tore the paper off, I found a stack of big bluestone pavers: Tom is going to make the path I've been wistfully hoping for, in the muddy desert between shed and house--the one I've been imagining, with beds of ferns bowing on either side.

To quote the poem I shared yesterday: "Call it tenderness. / / There it is. Singing."