I write to you from a quiet kitchen in western Massachusetts. Outside, a flat sky is just beginning to lighten. Nothing looks like itself. The pine grove is a cluster of silhouettes against pale paper, the house is a tidy construction of matchsticks, the kitchen is a rowboat in a still lake.

As usual, I am the only one awake. The refrigerator hums and bring me back to myself. The rowboat dissolves into fog. The matchsticks wriggle and disappear. Only the sky-paper remains, curling over a bowl of earth.

Yesterday was a flurry--hours upon hours of juggling one complicated recipe against another. My mother-in-law took charge of the turkey, but between and 1 and 7 p.m. I made potato, cauliflower, and fontina gratin; wild rice and cranberry stuffing; giblet gravy; the innards of the apple galette; herb butter for green beans; and probably something else I have forgotten. Always I show up with no idea of her menu. It's like the Thanksgiving version of the British Bake Off's technical challenge: six hours to make a holiday meal for eight people, without knowing what I'm getting into.

But we did it, without significant mishap. The meal was enjoyed, card games were played, and I collapsed into bed afterward feeling like I'd run a marathon.

Today will be much more sedate. I hope to get outside for a walk up to the reservoir, though rain is forecast, so that idea may not work out so well. I do need to venture out to the stores to buy a coffee grinder, to replace the one that self-destructed yesterday morning as I was making breakfast in Portland. [You may be interested to know that I just mistyped Portland as Poetland.]

I brought along Alice Munro's short stories to read; also Betsy Sholl's new poetry collection. I brought along my notebook of draft-blurts, in case I have a chance to tinker with any of them. We'll see. Possibly all I'll do is make more coffee and stare out the window. That will be okay too.