At 6 a.m. only the faintest of flurries are brushing Casco Bay, but the winds are already coiling and strange. The cat is poised outside on the stoop, hackles raised, whiskers a-twitch. I know what he means: the air is peculiar; a thick, cold swirl, like a summer gale that's churning into ice cream.

Well, we have nowhere to go. This morning I'm going to make coconut blancmange, and read a lot of books, and stare out the window at the growing storm; and Tom will work in his shop on our bed frame; and Ruckus will burrow under a blanket and try to forget the whole thing.

Right now I'm in the midst of Plath's The Bell Jar, Pym's A Few Green Leaves, O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," and Virgil's Aeneid. I'm still slowly copying out Dante's Inferno. I've got a stack of contemporary poetry collections I've been reading to prep for tomorrow's advanced chapbook seminar. I've also been reading contest submissions, though for the moment that pile is finished. It occurs to me that I would have no life if I went blind.

It also occurs to me that I might be writing the best poetry of my life right now.