New neighbors moved in yesterday, so all day long three burly guys lumbered back and forth among storage pods, a moving truck, the rental house, hauling confused sofas and wide-eyed boxes through the frosty air.

Meanwhile, I was upstairs in my study working on a poem that seemed to be channeling an imaginary Tennyson, an imaginary Dickinson. It's complete rubble so far, but the oddity is keeping me going.  A few pages in, I realized, for instance, that Dickinson has written my biography. I can't wait to see what she's said. That alone is a reason to keep forging ahead with this sloppy creation.

Midday I walked out into the small streets, the small woods, the broad cemetery. The poem draft rattled in my head. Crows perched on the tip-top twigs of the pines. Small dogs in small jackets scuttled past like caterpillars. The sea was out of sight, not out of mind. The sea is always around the corner in this town.

Dürer would have seen a reason for living
     in a town like this, with eight stranded whales
to look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house
on a fine day, from water etched
     with waves as formal as the scales
on a fish.

That's Marianne Moore, from "The Steeple-Jack" (1932). It is the only Moore poem I love, but I love it hard.

Sometimes visions arrive like sun-glitter on a bay. I squint against the bright. There's no possibility of seeing. Only sparks and shadows.