2026 has opened well, poem-wise. Yesterday, with relative ease, I wrote yet another of the character sketches I'm creating for our faculty performance in Monson. Suddenly these pieces are flowing out of me: brief examinations of various small-town people and situations, which eventually will be arranged against separate work that Teresa, Gretchen, and Gwynnie are producing. I've never written into this sort of project before, and I've been worried about freezing up, making nothing. But this week alone I've composed three new poems, a dialogue, and a list of possible subjects for group performance. Meanwhile, Teresa is writing landscape poems, Gwynnie is starting to conceptualize motion, Gretchen is researching historical figures . . . It's exciting, also daunting, to be involved in such a complicated undertaking. Three evenings of brand-new linked collaborative work: I admit that this was in fact my idea. Also I admit that I had/have no clear idea what such a collaboration would require or become. Fortunately Teresa is overflowing with organizational pizzazz. Otherwise we would have to hire a sheepdog to nip at our ankles.

Tom is taking today as vacation time, which means he and I will have a full four-day weekend together before work restarts on Monday. As far as I know there's nothing but puttering on our schedule. Among other tasks, I'll be putting away the handful of Christmas decorations I strewed around the house out of kitten reach. Already this morning I've dragged the trash to the curb, and I'll probably bake some bread, maybe run an errand or two, maybe do some more basement cleaning. Tom tells me that Boogie Nights, one of our favorite movies, is streaming, so we might spend an afternoon watching it together.

A little formlessness feels good because the next few months will be a snowball of poetry obligation. At the end of January Teresa and I are zoom-hosting a reunion class for Monson Arts/Frost Place alums. I have a reading in Brunswick, Maine, in early February. Later that month I'll be reading at Poets House in Manhattan as part of a memorial/book launch celebration of Baron Wormser's posthumous collection. In March Tom and Gretchen and Gwynnie and I will meet Teresa in Florida to work in person on our group performance. Then, as soon as I get back, I'll have to head to Bangor for a gig as the featured poet at the annual conference of the Maine Council of English Language Arts. In between all of this craziness I'll be driving back and forth to Monson, editing manuscripts at my desk, and gazing wild-eyed into the sky.

But for now I'm lazy and snug in my couch corner. Outside a squirrel bounces across the driveway, leaving a wake of tiny tracks in the fresh snow. Inside Chuck rattles a toy among the chair legs. Heat blasts enthusiastically out of the registers. Through the window I glimpse a blue, blue sky.