Outside, the fallen snow.

I can't tell from here how much we've gotten--four inches, five inches?--but it is weighty and beautiful on the broccoli and kale, the stoops and cars. In the misty morning darkness, the Congregational steeple rises over the white rooftops, the streetlights glow like fog lamps, the thin flakes sift down, down, slow and slow.

I sit here quietly, in the shadowed house. I've been reading the news this morning: about how Covid is ravaging my central Maine homeland; about the enormous disparity between where I live now and where I lived for so long--not just in cases and vaccination rates but in so many other areas: politics, wealth, education, geography . . . It is crushing, to be here, watching the disaster unfold.

This afternoon, I'll teach my final chapbook session. It's been a good class, with a lovely group of participants. We've reached the point where I'm almost immaterial. They're making the discoveries, doing most of the talking, figuring stuff out together. We've found that sweet spot, when a teacher sits back and watches her students run down the staircase they've built for themselves.

Outside, passing dogs bark and bustle in the new snow.

I am feeling simultaneously heavy and light, downhearted and hopeful. Nothing seems to be getting better. And yet artists are at work.