All day yesterday a cold wind blustered, and this morning it is still charging among the branches, whistling around corners, prying down collars, wriggling between buttons. 

I love a walk in the wind, and I'm looking forward to one later this morning, but for the moment I'm happy to be snug. It's Friday again, it's winter again . . . time yawns and stretches under its shaggy blanket . . . and what's with all of this personification? I've apparently contracted some kind of Dickensian virus.

I spent much of yesterday organizing packets for the zoom class, finalizing the syllabus, putting my thoughts and paperwork in order, which means that today I can step back from teaching chores and turn my thoughts to this afternoon's confab with Teresa and Jeannie. We've got poem drafts to share, books to discuss, maybe a group workshop proposal to consider. Something is afoot in our collaborative work, and whether that will emerge as a presentation, as a publication is unclear. But we're all aware that something intriguing is beginning to happen.

This morning I saw Carlene Gadapee's new review of Calendar--such a careful examination, such a close and intimate exploration of the poems. I found myself blinking away tears. It is so moving to be read. As I age I think more and more about the circle of people who live around the work, the poems like burning logs, the faces around them flickering in the firelight--these people who feed the poems, knowing or not knowing that they've done so, readers and characters, friends and ancestors. The work cannot exist without their oxygen.