I haven't lit a fire in the stove since last weekend. Temperatures have been warm: still no frost here, though the leaves are coming down more quickly. Now light rain is pecking at the windows, clattering on the vents, and I am sitting in my couch corner with my small cup of black coffee, slightly dazed from having actually slept hard all night long. Breaking the insomnia chain is always a giddy relief.

Today is housework day, writing-group evening. A week ago I was all nerves about my book launch. Now I am clutching shreds of sleep. My thoughts blink among laundry and mops. Maybe I am not a poet at all.

Still, yesterday I thought I was. Over zoom, Teresa, Jeannie, and I spent two afternoon hours wandering among the coils of T. S. Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent." We shared poem drafts we'd written under one another's influence. Our ancestors shimmered in the electric air: we spoke of Shakespeare, Keats, Plath . . . the magic, a devastating Eden, the fearsome beloved lore of the art.

Well, I'm lucky. Lucky to be able to open my chest and tear out my heart and lay it on a platter for all to see. That's what having these kinds of friends feels like. If this description sounds ironic, it's not meant to be. I leave such meetings in a tremble. Thought and feeling explode into flame. There's a terror to this sort of connection, this sort of conversation. Especially because I know I will always walk straight into the fire.

It's funny how risk-averse I can be in daily life: I wrestle with driving fears, I don't like heights or cold lakes, I can't bear blood in movies . . . I'm a baby in so many ways. But poetry. All I want to do is rush at the dragon, drive off the cliff, dive straight into the whirlpool. I am a danger to myself, and maybe to you too.

As Teresa said yesterday, the three of us are different poets, different people: so different, really. But we are all desperate to write great poems. And we don't shy away from those words. Great poems. That's what we want. We likely will never succeed. But we will die trying.