Many people dislike these short days, this enveloping darkness, but I am not one of them. I like the late afternoon dusk, the lamps and the wood fire; I like the blind windowpanes and the slow arrival of morning. I like opening the back door, leaning into invisible winter, breathing a sudden lungful of metallic cold.

Today is the first day of December, the last day of the work week. I hope to finish editing a chapter today, to clean the downstairs rooms, to undergo my exercise regimen, to look at poem blurts in my notebook. I'll talk to Teresa about Donne. I'll drop off a package for a friend. I'll figure out something for dinner. Maybe I'll rake leaves before the rain begins.

The day stretches before me; the day is still nighttime. I am awake but the sky is not, and anything could be happening outside in the black garden . . . who are these animals, these stones? The town nurtures its forest secrets; the wild sea mutters as it flows into a tranquil cove. Something happens that no one understands. Something changes; it grows, it dies away.

The tremor behind the real, burning bright.