It rained off and on yesterday, mostly a cold-warm drizzle, shifting temperatures and eerie winds, the kind of weather when I expect a witch on a bicycle to drop from the clouds.

I baked bread and washed clothes, read Dante and Drabble, coaxed out a new poem draft from a prompt I invented, submitted a few finished pieces, ambled around the neighborhood, carried firewood, shoveled ashes, made chicken chili with cornmeal dumplings, strained a muscle in my arm during exercise class. It was a plain sort of day, no witches on bicycles, just self with self, trotting through our paces.

I'm sitting here now, in this darkened room, listening to the city rumble forward into Tuesday . . . cars, planes, trains, buses all muttering Go, as the houses rest lightly, small tents peaked under a mackerel sky.

I dreamed last night that two well-known poets, a couple, did not recognize me as also being a poet. They were kind, they were generous, but they were aloof. My dream-self saw they were doing this, that they were separating themselves from me, but I wasn't disturbed by their manner, just aware, even amused.  The overarching emotion of this dream was, oddly, confidence.