It's Monday, end-of-the-holiday Monday, back-to-the-grind Monday. I will miss my slow mornings. I was not overjoyed to hear the alarm shrill at 5 a.m., though Charles was pleased about his suddenly very prompt breakfast. But I imagine I'll get back into the swing quickly enough.

Today I've got errands to run, emails to answer, probably some editing consultations to do, housework to deal with, next week's high school syllabus to hone . . . I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but it will no doubt conk me over the head at some point.

It's not like I haven't been working at all: I spent a good portion of the New Year's holiday immersed in poem projects, catching up on publicity chores, advising my kid about his grad-school application essays, and the like. Still, the days were a breath, and the upcoming months will be demanding.

Upstairs T is opening and closing his dresser drawers. Downstairs Chuck leans against my shoulder and chirps into my ear. The coffee table is piled with books. Clean counters gleam in the kitchen. Heat pulses through the registers. Wheels turn, slowly, then faster and faster, chugging us forward.

I considered making a New Year's list of things I dislike (Facebook memes that pretend to quote from sources but are really AI pap that reposters haven't fact-checked, famous athletes who are under felony investigation for beating up women but still get to play in games, men who call their wives mom, presidents who kidnap other presidents for fun), but the big stories are so bad, the small stories are grit in the eye, and what is my purpose on the planet anyway? Chuck says it's to sit quietly on the couch so he can cuddle, and maybe he's not wrong. I'll go out for my walk, slip and slide among the ice patches, watch flocks of sparrows twitter in the bare-boned hedges. I'll come home again. I'll put the kettle on the stove. I'll open a book. Who knows where righteousness arises? I am the last person who should preach.

One excellent side-effect of this New Year's holiday has been sleeping. Under usual conditions I'm up at 5 a.m. day in and day out; but with these dark mornings and T off the clock, my body has been happy to burrow. Chuck, of course, can only put up with so much of this. By 6:15 he is patting my cheek with a paw, pouncing on my feet, chirping his breakfast song. Still, despite his pesty antics, I've snagged more than an hour of extra sleep for four days in a row, and that's felt great.

Already dawn is yawning over the maples and the air is pale enough to reveal the frost shards glittering on my neighbor's car. I don't know what the day has in store.

Yesterday we toted a load of giveaway stuff to the Goodwill and I came home with three new-to-me books: Colm Toibin's The Magician, Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, and Larry McMurtry's The Last Kind Words Saloon. And in the mailbox I found another book, one I'd ordered: The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, the tenth-century jottings of a Japanese lady-in-waiting. It is the new year and my reading pile runneth over.

It is the new year and the government's disgusting antics escalate. How humiliating it is, to be an American.

***

Here's my essay about Baron in Vox Populi.

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.

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.

In the little northern city by the sea, the new year opens with a shimmer of new snow, pale skim on walkway and windshield. In the dark a distant highway mutters. Twining among the houses, wind fingers maple boughs, bumbles against chimneys, then untangles from human clutter and wheels over the black-tipped waves of the bay.

Now dawn unfolds. Suddenly, skeleton maples are inked against the faint gleam of future day. Blue presses against the windowpanes of the Alcott House, peering in at lamplight, at a fat kitten washing his face.

Last night's bustling little party was homey and sweet. The quiet room still basks in that leftover warmth.  I never have been the sort to make new year's resolutions.

Outside, a seagull wails. Inside, the kitten flits up the stairs. Bad times are coming. Also good times. Who knows how they will arrive?

Being a poet is awkward . . . Always trying to cram words into wordlessness. Constantly making the big mistake: pretending there's a moral to the story.

A kitten breathes into my ear. My hands fumble at sentences. Plain daylight has arrived, flat and sensible, no nonsense about it. Welcome to morning. Get to work.

For the first time in years Tom and I are having a New Year's Eve party . . . only five guests, but still that's a sizable number in these little rooms. The plan is dinner first and then a card game and nobody staying up till midnight. This is in stark contrast to my sons' parties--J invited 60 people to his house, and P is hosting canoe friends for an annual New Year's gathering, and I'm sure everyone will stay up till 3. But because the boys and their partners keep texting me about their various plans and inquiring about mine, I am sort of feeling like an actual reveler.

P is cooking a vat of Mexican-style pork and tomatillos. J is constructing many Italian sandwiches. And I am making Julia Child's parmesan-crusted chicken breasts. They do have a lot of steps, but I can get everything done well ahead of time, and they reheat beautifully. The rest of the meal will be simple: roasted potatoes with pesto, sweet and sour peppers, a green salad, and a friend is bringing dessert.

Yesterday I got quite a lot done on my personal projects: wrote a poem draft, pulled together materials for the performance, read a chunk of "Lancelot and Elaine." This morning I'll get onto my mat, then spend a few more hours in the word world before I launch into chicken prep.

It's quite cold outside, and icy as well: yesterday's walk felt dangerous. But the little house is cozy, and Chuck is the happiest cat in town. Bonne chance to you all, on this final day of a stony year. I hope you are warming your hands at a flame.

On this cold and windy morning, young Charles is the happiest cat on earth. Home! Home! Home! As soon as I released him from his travel crate yesterday, he began racing through the house, screeching around corners, hurling himself onto rugs, rolling around in ecstasy, throwing himself into our arms. He kept this up, with only mild breaks, from midafternoon till 9 p.m., when he got into bed with me and finally fell asleep. According to the kennel owner, he was an excellent guest--playing, cuddling, even making friends with one of the other visiting cats. I believe her: Chuck is the kind of guy who makes the best of his circumstances. But he sure is thrilled to be home.

Yesterday I caught up on housework and laundry, changed the sheets, did most of the grocery shopping, fetched Chuck, and otherwise reestablished our nest. Today I'll turn my thoughts to poetry. I've got my Tennyson homework to read, thoughts to sketch out for the conference faculty performance, notebook scratchings to revisit. I'm immersed (again) in Updike's Rabbit Is Rich and have two new novels waiting in the wings: Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake and Andrew Miller's The Land in Winter. Why not take a cue from Chuck and wallow in it all like a pig in clover?

And if I get tired of being cerebral, I can go for a slippery, windy walk; or mess around with my very slow cleaning-the-basement project; or make gnocchi; or finish the grocery shopping; or have a little private dance party in the kitchen. The day is my oyster.