Last night I woke to the batter of sleet against the roof, but this morning the weather has retreated to silence and snow. That's how things are supposed to go all day--back and forth, back and forth, sleet, snow, freezing rain--and I'm glad neither of us needs to drive anywhere today. Tonight I'm supposed to go to a poetry-workshop meeting, but that's within walking distance, if it happens at all.

In this furnace-driven house I don't usually keep a wood fire going all day, but I lit one this morning, just for the pleasure of it . . . a day off, miserable weather, so why not have a fire and an extra cup of coffee? The glow in the still-dark house is comforting and nostalgic, a reminder of all those years of getting up early, scraping out the ashes, blowing on the coals, keeping the fire alive, day in, day out, month upon month. Always that first-thing-in-the-morning flare was a beacon, the hour's success, ah, we will not die of cold today.

Tomorrow I'll be on the road, heading north for a night in Wellington and then a teaching day in Monson. But today I'll read, fidget with poem drafts, copy out Dante, mess around with my stuff. And the sleet and the snow and the rain will fall, and the little wood stove will creak as it heats.

One of the beauties of winter is the way in which it encourages me to sit with myself. Summer is garden and grass and busyness, but winter is a hatch into patience, and patience is such a big part of being a writer--for me, anyway. Not necessarily logical, rational patience; more like crazy patience, tap-dancing patience . . . time to waltz around the dining room, time to moon over a mysterious phrase, time to blow up the basement with my metaphorical 1940s-era chemistry set.

Outside, a snow plow bangs and scrapes its way up my bendy little street. Inside, the fire has settled into easy flames. I like being the only one awake in the morning. I like knowing that T is upstairs asleep, with the cat tucked against his knees. I like knowing that a last cup of coffee awaits me in the pot, that the kitchen counters are clean and bare and ready for use, that yesterday's laundry is dry on the cellar lines, that the houseplants are watered and the woodbox is full. On the shelf we have a loaf of fresh whole-wheat bread and a pan of brownies; in the refrigerator we have beets and spinach and fennel and carrots and two sweet baby turnips. I hear wind squeal against the edges of the house. I think of the hilarious simile I copied out of the Inferno yesterday--

The way . . .

            the beaver plans against his prey among

The lands of the drunken Germans. . . .

--Stanley Plumly's unexpected translation of a passage in canto 17, which of course reminds me of the "fearful porpentine" in Hamlet and myriad strange natural history blunders in Paradise Lost. How wonderful it can be not to know things, to imagine predatory beavers among the drunken Germans or unicorns fenced into a tiny Arcadian barnyard, and think This is true!