A cold morning here in the north country: 18 degrees, with a high of 25 forecast. Last night, as I trudged back from dinner, the black air swirled with snowflakes. Outside the fire station a pile of guys were gathered around a broken-down firetruck, all of them gleaming under the streetlight. I walked from one end of the brief downtown to the other; and where the houses stopped, blackness suddenly dropped, like a stage curtain.

I've been carrying around William Trevor's short stories, carrying around John Donne's Holy Sonnets, thinking about winter, wrapping myself in lamplight. All of this rereading I do--the longing for reimmersion, for existence inside; to become story, language, character . . . Sometimes I stand back in wonder. How is it that I can't relinquish the familiar, the deeply known? The tales are etched on my bones.

And still time wanders forward; the men in their Carhartt coats lean forward to peer under the firetruck's hood; snowflakes spin and leap; I turn pages toward the same hard ending.