Outside in the frigid darkness a few holiday lights still gleam. They're hard to part with, I know. Though I stowed away the rest of our ornaments yesterday, I couldn't relinquish the string of fairy lights gracing the mantle. At midwinter every glimmer is precious.

For some reason, the Alcott House feels especially dollhouse-like this morning. Despite its seven rooms and two bathrooms, everything is in miniature: little kitchen, little living room, little dining room, little bedroom, little studies. A teeny-tiny wood stove. A kitten basket. I imagine a large child lifting off the roof and rearranging the furniture.

I spent some of yesterday catching up on publicity stuff--not my favorite task but here we are in a new year so I need to get on the stick. Probably most of you already received the newsletter, but among other things it announces--finally--the release of Poetry Lab Notes, the collaborative Substack journal that Teresa, Jeannie, and I have been fermenting for months. Our first post is a memorial to Baron Wormser, and tomorrow Vox Populi will publish my long essay about him and his work, so I am feeling a bit blue--missing his acerbity, missing his affection.

Well, so go the days--what's vanished splashing into what's here and what will come. Time is a sloppy mess. I slouch on my shabby couch as beads of light gleam among the stones on the mantle, as young Charles hums cheerfully into my ear, as my dear one sighs upstairs in his sleep. The air is thick with ghosts.

They swirl, dust motes in a draught. Dear Grandpap. Dear Jilline. Dear Ray. Dear Baron. Dear so many. A rosary of beloveds.