We slept a bit late this morning, as T doesn't have to be on the job today till 9. It's cold out there, and shortly I've got to gird myself to haul the recycling and compost bins to the curb and then begin my usual Friday sheets-and-towels-and-floors cleaning routine. Oy, the amount of time I spend keeping this little household shipshape. But I know bad things would happen to my state of mind if I didn't.

Snow is forecast for Saturday night and Sunday, then again for Tuesday night into Wednesday. Within that tiny window of no-snow I'll be on the road, so wish me luck.

Thus, today is my last day of freedom, such as it is, with this load of housework to do and then a weekend of chores and shoveling. And I've got two phone meetings and various conference-publicity chores to deal with, so maybe "last day of freedom" isn't even a pertinent phrase. But that giant poem draft is still fizzing, my desks are still splayed with dictionaries; I still one have one last day of not being beholden to a paystub.

I finished Mason's The North Woods, which I hope to write about this weekend, and immediately began rereading John Fowles's novella The Ebony Tower. For now I need to stay with books that construct versions of enchantment . . . this seems to have been an important impetus for my current poem draft.  Byatt's The Children's Book, Fowles's The Magus and The Ebony Tower, Mason's The North Woods, Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series: everything I've been reading lately has apparently been cutting a window in my mind, though each of these works is very different from the others . . . and all make clear that enchantment is not necessarily safe or good.

And today I'll talk to Teresa about Donne's "Batter my heart, three-personed God." The words are overwhelming me, really. My reading is a sea.

Which is why my house needs to be clean and neat. Otherwise, I would drown.