Yesterday I did not write at all (other than my morning note to you and my dream-book transcription). I had too many other regular-life things to get done: mostly vacuuming and mopping and multiple loads of heavy laundry and present-wrapping and -shipping. But taking a day off from being a poet was fine because I was pretty tired. I did make four new drafts this week, and garble together some notions about sentences and fragments as impetus for thought, and begin to glimpse a thematic path forward among these very new poems, and adopt the word histoire as a narrative carapace, and read and read and read. That's a ton of work, in just four days.

My plan for today is to go into town and do a little Christmas shopping at used bookstores and junk shops and such, but the weather is supposed to be a mix of rain-sleet-snow, so the road conditions may defeat me. Otherwise, I've got chicken stock to simmer, and squash rolls to bake, and my study to clean, and a library book to pick up. I want to walk out into the gloaming and look at the Christmas lights. I want to cut a few more stalks of kale from my garden before winter closes it down for good.

Here's a list of goals . . . my goals. You have different ones, I know.

Obligation as generative flame. Pattern as vocation. Difficulty as a tower stair. The vibration of the present, muffling regret and envy and fear. Honesty and invention. Eyes on the world.