Icy flecks razor my face as I set the compost bin outside the back door. Snow has fallen and is beginning to fall and will fall and will fall through the day and into the night to come and then it will fall and slowly fall and slowly slowly and then there will be stillness.

Yesterday was one phone call after another, meetings and not meetings, and trying to collect my scattered thoughts, and trying fulfill my appointed duties, and always worrying about Ukraine, and then in the evening going out to write, and then afterwards collapsing into the clean sheets and sleeping like I'd been poleaxed.

Today will be another such, I suppose, but at least this time I will have the snow to keep me company.

No, I think today will be quieter. Just me at my desk at the window, with my head down, following instructions.

There are days when it is hard to admit that it is hard. Choose your own antecedents for it. 

Anyway, here we are.

Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve
Let the radiant thought last in stillness
though the page is almost filled and the flame flickers
We haven't risen yet to the level of ourselves

[from Adam Zagajewski, "Don't Allow the Lucid Moment to Dissolve," translated by Renata Gorczinzky]