We got our first real snow of the season yesterday, and this is the view from my front window this morning. By "real" snow I don't mean deep, because it isn't, but it's beautifully clingy and soft, and it fell like feathers all day.

I slept late this morning and woke to an impatient cat and to the rich pale light of morning snowfall. The interior of the house has changed now: white shimmers against the blue remnants of night, and every window casts a new shadow.

I did my errands early yesterday, but still didn't beat the snow. By the time I pushed my cart out into the grocery-store parking lot, big flakes were sifting down; and as I threaded my way down to the wharf and the fish market, seagulls were dancing in the road, and a V of geese was flying overhead--the birds were excited and I was excited, and the guys behind the fish counter were murmuring reminiscences about the best lunches they'd ever eaten (a pizza with Asian flank steak and calamari; famous crab rolls), and I was glad to be out and about in this world . . . clutching my neat paper packages of salmon and pollock, fretting about the sufferings of the panhandlers at the intersections, glancing at the ugly buildings, the beautiful buildings, the flat estuarial cove scattered with eiders, a small father lugging a big handsome baby, the corgis mistreating their walkers, the man on his knees outside his house, mending his car in the snow . . .

Today my only plans are to read: read for my upcoming classes, read for my conversation with Teresa next week. I have a poem draft to work on, and we might go out to a party this evening. But I don't have to cook tonight; I don't have to clean house. I probably do have to shovel, but that will be no big deal. I will drink tea, and sit beside a stack of books, and let my brain trickle among the poems, and trust that something good will happen.

All day long I worked on conference planning, and I got a lot done . . . primarily sussing out the structure of this year's format, beginning to fill in my own lessons and sidebar readings, and preparing space for visiting faculty. It felt good to get a firm handle on that situation, and now today I'll be turning my attention to the classes coming up at the end of the month: sorting through readings, compiling prompts, etc., etc.

It's Friday--trash day, exercise-class day, wash-the-sheets day, deal-with-the-empty-refrigerator day--and the sidewalks and stairs are slick with ice. I did go out last night into the freezing rain, but the roads were still passable, and I was very, very glad to be writing with my salon. Now I've got a fat messy blurt to transcribe, and maybe I'll get a chance to do spend time doing that today. It felt really good to let my scribble-brain take over, and this morning my general holiday miasma seems to have lifted, maybe thanks to that session of crazy fast writing.

 Rain and sleet this morning: it's ugly out there, and I'm sorry T will have to drive in it. My guess is that the weather will keep the tree guys away. They didn't have time to finish the funeral yesterday, so a skeleton still stands between the driveways . . . crown vanished, just the harsh hacked trunk reaching into the sky. I'm not complaining about the tree people, though. They did a good, careful job of taking it down piece by piece in a very tight space. And I am always impressed by arborists--so strong and nimble. That is intensely hard work.

I finally finished my editing job yesterday, which means that today will be class planning. I've got the summer teaching conference to wrestle with, plus a chapbook session at the end of this month and a generative writing weekend in early February . . . the quantity is a bit overwhelming, actually, but at least I have some dedicated time to figure it out, this week and next, before another editing job drops onto my plate.

And I am hoping to go out to write tonight. Last week's salon didn't happen; too much busyness in people's lives; but my brain is so in need of a burst and a surprise. I'm counting on a session tonight.

Otherwise, I'll be reading about 17th-century poetry, walking in the harsh rain, vacuuming up cat hair, checking in with my parents . . . a cold, wet Thursday in January, in the little northern city by the sea, where fat flocks of eiders bob in the cove, where gulls perch on the cluttered chimneys, where everything is damp and vaguely salty, where the gravestones mourn captains lost in ocean storms, and the ocean storms glower at the land, this place that for some reason has turned out to be where I live. 

It turns out that I am, indeed, still in Portland . . . glad not to be negotiating icy roads this morning, but the downside is that I'll be home all day for the tree-removal clamor.

Oh, well. If I survived the ledge pounding when the city tore up our street, I can survive an all-day chipper. But I'm not looking forward to it.

Though I won't be in the classroom today, I've got lots of work to do: editing to finish up, and then a bog of class and program planning to wade into. I should start this week's round of bathroom and floor cleaning. I'll get through my exercise class, and figure out something to do with shrimp for dinner. I'm reading the Inferno (copying it out) and an anthology of 17th-century English verse (with Teresa), and the graphic novel Watchmen, which my nephew gave me for Christmas, and in the interstices a comfortable Dorothy Sayers mystery.

But I'm still feeling unsettled . . . from Christmas, from that football game . . . whatever the cause, a lingering miasma of trouble, past, present, and future--the ghost of sadness that was, is, and will come.

By the way, my friend Angela left a gorgeous short essay about the football game in yesterday's comments. If you haven't read it, you should. 

So T and I sat down to look at the Bills game last night, and thus we, along with millions, watched in real time as Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest and collapsed on the field. It was horrifying--both the event itself and the distress of the other players . . . a tight circle of weeping young men, each trembling with pain, fear, and bewilderment.

The moment was dreadful; I imagine everyone who saw it is still shaken.

Of course the game had to stop. None of the players would have been able to continue; that was clear. 

I was convinced last night that Damar had died on the field, but the medics restarted his heartbeat, and somehow he is still alive this morning.

And here I am, also alive, apparently, though why does the experience of watching someone almost die on TV feel so personal? Death with commercial breaks. Death with talking-head commentary. It was gruesome.

* * *

As you can see, I'm having a bit of trouble gearing myself for the day. I'm supposed to head north this afternoon, but there may be weather and/or scheduling issues, so it's possible the class will be postponed. I've got editing to do, a phone meeting, all kinds of teaching prep to undertake . . . the week will be packed, whether or not I'm in the classroom.

* * *

Send a little love to the boys on the field, if you can. It's easy to forget how young they are, until you see them in tears.

Back to the grind: exercise class, work call, editing, plus grocery shopping and whatever housework energy I can muster. Tomorrow I head north, for teaching on Wednesday, and then the rest of the week will also be work work work.

In the midst of this, we are losing one of our enormous maples. On Wednesday, the dying giant that graces the narrow split between our driveway and the neighbor's will be euthanized. There will be chainsaws, a chipper, a crane: the noise will be terrible, and I'm not sorry I'll be out of town for it. I am sad about the necessity, of course. It's been a friendly tree, though scary during storms, and I wish there was some way to rejuvenate it. But it's poised to split onto both of our houses, it constantly drops limbs, and there seems to be no alternative.

Here's that At Length poem link I was telling you about yesterday. The excerpt, "Three Weeks," encompasses the final three sections of A Month in Summer, my book-length diary narrative, which is still floating around looking for a publisher. It was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, and I think it's possible someone might take it eventually; actually, one publisher has held it for most of year and assures me they're considering it seriously, so maybe maybe. (The first section previously appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, if you want to read them in order.)

I woke up at 5:30 a.m. to discover the new year squatting on my doorstep: a swirl of fog, a tumble of wind, a scrap of crumpled paper. Welcome, ghost: stumble in and sit a spell.

On this first day of January, it is 49 degrees in the little northern city by the sea. Yesterday Tom and I sang away the old year with a trudge on the beach at Kettle Cove. The tide was out, and seagulls squabbled over clam scraps, and a brackish creek tumbled and hissed among the dunes. Then a parade of rain, and now this Marchlike damp o'erspreads the Eos-dark.

Look at Time and his trickster sister, Weather, disguising themselves as a basket of kittens! I know better, but I fall for them every time.

The year yawns and stretches and puts on its glasses. I pour black coffee into a white cup. Why, it might as well be 2022 around here. T sleeps upstairs, the cat coils into his chair, I stare into the cold firebox and ponder my lists of chores . . . take down Christmas tree; copy out canto of Dante . . . It's a day like any other, but its outfit is cuter.  Welcome, metaphor: stumble in and sit a spell.

Things that happened in the household this week: Tom and I were both awarded American Rescue Plan grants for art projects. Plus, I got two poems accepted yesterday, and a large section of my diary manuscript is supposed to appear in At Length today. (It's not posted yet but I'll share the link if/when it is.) T has spent his time off working steadily on photo prep and printing. I have spent my not-time-off editing an academic journal and planning for classes.

Things that will happen in the household today: T will do more of the same. I will make chicken stock and roast a butternut squash and take down the tree and put away ornaments and vacuum up needles and copy out Dante and work on a poem and call my parents and who am I and why am I on this planet and how do you keep track of your rattly path and what can you teach me?

O Time, O Weather, squeaking in your willow basket, batting your little paws at the lamplight . . . 

On January 1, 2023, I will step outside and peek into my cold frame and hope that I'll find a handful of arugula worth harvesting. Welcome, chlorophyll! A January salad is a small Arcadia, though it will stop no one from starving. "Ay, there's the rub," as that sulky boy prince might say. What Hamlet needs is something to take his mind off himself. Maybe I'll get him to help me with a few of the chores on my list. What's the worst he can do? Stab me? Welcome, characters! Take your shoes off before you track sand all over my clean kitchen.