The big news around here is that Little Chuck's gut is showing signs of improvement. I can't help but think of the scene, late in War and Peace, when Natasha rushes out to tell her family that her baby's stool has turned from green to yellow. "This is the central moment of the novel!" crowed my college instructor, as various future Wall Streeters and med students stared at him in confusion. None of us (except for the teacher) knew anything about babies, so it's no wonder they were perplexed. Yet I do remember the surge of joy I felt . . . that such a scene could be central, that a dirty diaper could be the pivot of the universe. It was a fine thing for a twenty-year-old to learn.

I'll be working for much of today and tomorrow, leading a zoom class on reading, writing, and re-seeing persona poems. I hope that Chuck will manage to leave me alone, but I am not confident. Presently he is full of breakfast and is companionably curled up on the pillow behind my shoulder, but this sort of Hallmark-card behavior is always extremely temporary.

I've had to take a small break from To the Lighthouse because, like the characters, like the novelist, I am always devastated when Mrs. Ramsay suddenly dies, mid-tale. It never stops being a shock. Instead, I've started looking at Trust, a novel by Cynthia Ozick, which a friend recommended. I know I'll get back to the Woolf, probably very soon, but that death is one of the hardest in literature.

Maybe Petya's, in War and Peace, is as terrible. Maybe the drowning of Maggie in The Mill on the Floss.

Little Chuck is patting my cheek with a paw and purring to beat the band. He argues that he is nothing like death, but I have already lost Ruckus and Ray and my nation this year, so I know better. Still, I let myself believe in this foolish, spiky, four-pound ball of wiggle. "Rules for happiness; something to do, someone to love, something to hope for," wrote Kant, of all people. Perhaps he had just seen his child's dirty diaper. Perhaps he was grinning.

***

On another note: speaking of persona poems, I've got a new one out in the Hole in the Head Review, alongside work by my dear Betsy Sholl.