We got our first real snow of the season yesterday, and this is the view from my front window this morning. By "real" snow I don't mean deep, because it isn't, but it's beautifully clingy and soft, and it fell like feathers all day.

I slept late this morning and woke to an impatient cat and to the rich pale light of morning snowfall. The interior of the house has changed now: white shimmers against the blue remnants of night, and every window casts a new shadow.

I did my errands early yesterday, but still didn't beat the snow. By the time I pushed my cart out into the grocery-store parking lot, big flakes were sifting down; and as I threaded my way down to the wharf and the fish market, seagulls were dancing in the road, and a V of geese was flying overhead--the birds were excited and I was excited, and the guys behind the fish counter were murmuring reminiscences about the best lunches they'd ever eaten (a pizza with Asian flank steak and calamari; famous crab rolls), and I was glad to be out and about in this world . . . clutching my neat paper packages of salmon and pollock, fretting about the sufferings of the panhandlers at the intersections, glancing at the ugly buildings, the beautiful buildings, the flat estuarial cove scattered with eiders, a small father lugging a big handsome baby, the corgis mistreating their walkers, the man on his knees outside his house, mending his car in the snow . . .

Today my only plans are to read: read for my upcoming classes, read for my conversation with Teresa next week. I have a poem draft to work on, and we might go out to a party this evening. But I don't have to cook tonight; I don't have to clean house. I probably do have to shovel, but that will be no big deal. I will drink tea, and sit beside a stack of books, and let my brain trickle among the poems, and trust that something good will happen.