It's warmer than it's been: 32 degrees and dripping at 5 a.m. The cat rushed out into the darkness, then rushed back in five minutes later, but at least he had a small airing. He does hate winter. You couldn't pay that pet to run away from home.

It's trash day in the neighborhood, and I need to get off the couch and start emptying bins and lugging compost. It's sheet-washing day in the household, downstairs-vacuuming-and-mopping day, and I'll get to all of it, I'll get to all of it, but for a few more minutes I'm going to sit here with my coffee, staring down at the fat biography of Virginia Woolf, at the letters of Jane Carlyle, at a half-done crossword puzzle and a stack of half-read New Yorkers, the history of Cabeza de Vaca's journey, an atlas of the Gulf of Maine . . . the litter of our reading lives.

Later this morning, after I muscle through a batch of housework and my exercises, I'll walk over to my friend Gretchen's house so that we can start sketching out a class we'll be teaching together in June. Eventually I'll do some editing; but, given my long teaching day tomorrow, I hope I can snag a bit of time for myself today, time that isn't just housecleaning or cooking or hanging laundry. I've got notebook blurts to transcribe, new drafts to beetle into, books to read, the violin to practice: the other face of work, the private chores, the work that affects no one but myself.

It takes a lot of energy to be a poet, to keep stuffing words into the crevices of my quotidian duties. Sometimes I wonder how long I can keep this up. Maybe one day I'll fade into watching Hallmark movies and cat videos; the days of poetry will be over; I will learn a different life. I find this hard to imagine, but the future is a murky trail.