And here we are at Monday again.

This week will be a different variety of busy, the on-the-road sort, unfortunately with snow in the mix. I'll head north tomorrow, teach on Wednesday, and then, with luck, make my way home that afternoon--if I can. I'm already trying not to be anxious.

Today, at least, I'm home, with a pile of house chores and errands and desk work on the docket, but also a walk with a friend, and, I hope, a nap because I didn't sleep very well last night.

I'm still reading the Ann Beattie stories, still wrestling with a poem draft . . . feeling, for some reason, slightly under the weather, a little achy, a little tense, hoping that time and brisk air will iron out my twitchiness.

But the house is peaceable. Coffee and warmth. The new cabinets gleaming softly under lamplight. I daresay my body will snap out of its sorrows.

It's almost February. Soon snowdrops will unfold in the neighbors' front yards. Already I've heard the chickadees singing their spring songs. I need to work on my seed orders. I need to think about planting, hard as that is to imagine.

Miracles await, and disaster also, and perhaps that is why my body is sad today. It is hard to know how to be ready for anything.