I slept massively late this morning . . . more than two hours after my usual rising time. That's kind of a Christmas miracle in itself. But I'm still the first person up, sitting alone in the kitchen, looking through the big windows, down the steep wooded hill and the ice-skimmed pond at its foot.

No snow in Massachusetts, just winter grays and greens and browns and the house perched like an aerie on the ridge, with the big hemlocks and white pines climbing up to greet it.

We got here yesterday early in the afternoon, threading our way through heavy traffic. But there were no jams, and P arrived from New York in good time too. 

Now I have no plans, none. I live at the whim of others. I sit here in the kitchen with my laptop and a fat copy of A. S. Byatt's The Children's Book. My notebook of poem drafts is tucked downstairs in my bag, ready for delving, when the time is right. My biggest challenge will be learning how to use my mother-in-law's new stove to make coffee.

And yet--

Mezzo Cammin

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

Half of my life is gone, and I have let

            The years slip from me and have not fulfilled

            The aspiration of my youth, to build

            Some tower of song with lofty parapet.

Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret

            Of restless passions that would not be stilled,

            But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,

            Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;

Though, halfway up the hill, I see the Past

            Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—

            A city in the twilight dim and vast,

With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—

            And hear above me on the autumnal blast

            The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.