I had a slow day yesterday, mostly rain and reading and baseball on the radio. But today I'll get back on the stick: I need to clean house and bake bread, and maybe do some work outside, though the weather looks uncooperative for that. Tom and I are getting used to being a pair again; I'm remembering how to cook for two, how to clean up for two. It's so radically different, caretaking for two instead of one. You wouldn't think it would make such a difference in a day.

In the course of an email thread about entirely different topic, a friend of mine--a well-known poet--mentioned my piece "Mr. Kowalski," which she called a "major poem." I was nonplussed, of course, and head-in-the-sand embarrassed, and unable to respond elegantly. But the comment has been scratching at me ever since: the praise, yes, but also what does it mean, to have written something so large? By "large," I don't mean "great"--I mean "covering so much ground," which that poem does, whether one likes it or not. (And some people don't like it, and have told me so.) Naturally I worry that all of my poems should be large; or that I'll never write another large poem; or that large poems overshadow the value of all the smaller poems; or that it's too big for the new collection . . . worry, worry, worry: it's what I do, always second-guessing myself.

The poem is not new. I first published it in 2013, but it never showed up in a collection till now . . . it was too large, too much. But this time around, I took the risk. Now I'm wondering if it's still too big for its box.