I woke up at 5:30 a.m. to discover the new year squatting on my doorstep: a swirl of fog, a tumble of wind, a scrap of crumpled paper. Welcome, ghost: stumble in and sit a spell.

On this first day of January, it is 49 degrees in the little northern city by the sea. Yesterday Tom and I sang away the old year with a trudge on the beach at Kettle Cove. The tide was out, and seagulls squabbled over clam scraps, and a brackish creek tumbled and hissed among the dunes. Then a parade of rain, and now this Marchlike damp o'erspreads the Eos-dark.

Look at Time and his trickster sister, Weather, disguising themselves as a basket of kittens! I know better, but I fall for them every time.

The year yawns and stretches and puts on its glasses. I pour black coffee into a white cup. Why, it might as well be 2022 around here. T sleeps upstairs, the cat coils into his chair, I stare into the cold firebox and ponder my lists of chores . . . take down Christmas tree; copy out canto of Dante . . . It's a day like any other, but its outfit is cuter.  Welcome, metaphor: stumble in and sit a spell.

Things that happened in the household this week: Tom and I were both awarded American Rescue Plan grants for art projects. Plus, I got two poems accepted yesterday, and a large section of my diary manuscript is supposed to appear in At Length today. (It's not posted yet but I'll share the link if/when it is.) T has spent his time off working steadily on photo prep and printing. I have spent my not-time-off editing an academic journal and planning for classes.

Things that will happen in the household today: T will do more of the same. I will make chicken stock and roast a butternut squash and take down the tree and put away ornaments and vacuum up needles and copy out Dante and work on a poem and call my parents and who am I and why am I on this planet and how do you keep track of your rattly path and what can you teach me?

O Time, O Weather, squeaking in your willow basket, batting your little paws at the lamplight . . . 

On January 1, 2023, I will step outside and peek into my cold frame and hope that I'll find a handful of arugula worth harvesting. Welcome, chlorophyll! A January salad is a small Arcadia, though it will stop no one from starving. "Ay, there's the rub," as that sulky boy prince might say. What Hamlet needs is something to take his mind off himself. Maybe I'll get him to help me with a few of the chores on my list. What's the worst he can do? Stab me? Welcome, characters! Take your shoes off before you track sand all over my clean kitchen.