For some reason I jolted wide awake at 4:30 a.m., and now here I am, blearily drinking coffee and pondering my fingers on this keyboard. Outside, it's cold and blustery but still too dark to see what the sky has in store for the day. Inside, the little Christmas tree gleams in the corner. Paperwhites bloom on the kitchen counter.

Last night I made falafel for dinner, and the kitchen still smells of tahini and spice. Later, I dreamed that I needed to make a book but I had nothing to put in it.

A few days ago my friend Baron said to me, "You must be in a good place to write such a poem," and I am wondering: How can I tell? The poems are arriving so differently from the way they used to arrive. I seem to be writing fewer of them, yet they are accruing quickly. New drafts often manifest close to their final form. They generally show up in communal settings--at the salon, during class. It is as if everything I have studied and honed for the past twenty-five years has been dumped on its head. Solitude is unnecessary. Deep revision is unnecessary. Literary models are unnecessary. Go into the world and write.

[N.B. Of course I have spent decades doing all of that apprentice work. I'm not eschewing it. But over the Covid years my writing practice has radically changed . . . at first, by necessity, when P had to move in with us and I lost my solitude. Turns out that clatter and disruption can be an open door.]

Instructions for writers (but only if you are me):

Tie a piece of string to the doorway before entering the maze. That will give the villain something to untie as soon as you get good and lost.

If it sounds good, it is probably a riddle.