This has been a hell of a week. There's no way to sugarcoat the pain of losing my oldest friend and losing the American experiment within the same handful of days.

The amazing thing, though, are the lights that keep glowing, the steady beacons--the friends and family members who are holding us up, holding each other up . . . Weslea in West Tremont, Angela and Steve in Wellington, who fed us and housed us and sat around the table and pressed us to tell the stories. Valerie, our next-door neighbor in Portland, who left meals in our refrigerator and assuaged our cat. Gretchen and her family, in the throes of tending their dying mother, who lit a bonfire and asked us to come sit by it in the gloaming. My sister and my parents and my in-laws, reaching out from afar. My sons murmuring I love you, day after day. College friends embracing over miles and time. My students, grappling honorably with confusion. Poets breathing words.

The work is so simple, so profound. We hold one another up.

And so, today, I will pick up my battered hoe and go back to work. I've been assigned to co-write Ray's obituary: that's my number-one obligation for the day, but I will also return to reaching out to sad people, I will finish an editing job, I will do laundry, I will send birthday greetings to my father. I will walk out into the city and make eye contact with strangers and smile. I will fill my beloved's cup with coffee. I will rake leaves into the garden beds, and I will tease the cat. I very much doubt I will write poems, but who knows?

Yesterday, amid the grim aftermath, I received a piece of extraordinary news: a review of Calendar will appear in the Boston Globe on Sunday. This will be the largest review venue I've ever had, and the opportunity came about almost by accident. I'm intensely grateful, also extremely nervous. Still, the timing has been yet another small gleam in the darkness.

Thus, we stumble forward, with hands outstretched.