Woke up to drizzle, streetlight reflections, and our doughty little Christmas tree, shining sweetly in its corner. It is Wednesday, the last day of November, in the little northern city by the sea, and I am tucked into a cat-scratched couch corner in a shabby postwar budgeteer cape thinking about Dante and the arugula that is still thriving in my cold frame. 

It will be a rainy-cloudy day, but not cold. I've got to prep for tonight's reading, and do my exercise class, and catch up on a few teaching tasks, but otherwise the day is mine. I want to work on poems and maybe take a first look at how the finished pieces might gather together into an embryo manuscript. It's way too early to be really thinking about order, but I'm interested in starting to notice what I've got.

I'm expecting a new editing project to arrive by the end of the week, and I'll be teaching on the next three Sundays, not to mention hitting the road again on Monday, so I'm very much enjoying these few quiet days. Yesterday I went for a long walk by myself, then rattled around the empty rooms, just pacing and pausing. I feel as if my mind may be preparing itself for a burst of something new, but I don't know what that will be, or how I will wrestle with it. All I can do is wander and wait.