Yesterday I shipped my big editing project to the author; and though I still have a few bits and pieces to finish up on it, I'm going to take today off from editing and catch up on some planning, poetry, and house things. It's Friday, it's thirteen degrees, it's March, and I am caught up in a swirl of obligation . . . teaching, editing, contest judging, housework--and spring is looming, with all of its pleasures and chores. My little city garden makes so many demands. How did I ever manage to raise children and manage a 40-acre forest homestead--goats, pigs, chickens, extreme firewood, a giant garden, canning, cheesemaking--plus edit and write and teach? I must have been nuts. Or young.

Outside, a lopsided moon beams over the little northern city by the sea. Inside, the furnace grumbles, lamplight casts circles of shine and shadow. The tidy shabby chairs glance modestly toward the fireplace. The books on the table cough lightly to catch my attention. In a stone jar, the rosy hyacinths foretell their own death.

Today will be filled with unremarkable things--clean sheets and clean floors, five words on a page, a cold wind.

I send my messages ahead of me.

You read them, they speak to you

in siren tongues, ears of flame

spring from your heads to take them.

--Denise Levertov, from "Poet and Person