Yesterday's peaceful vibe was shattered when water suddenly started pouring onto the kitchen counter via a screw hole in the wall. "Ice dam," Tom said, and was quickly up on a ladder scraping snowpack away from the dormer seam. He got the flow stopped almost immediately, but ugh. If it's not one problem, it's another around here. (The peaceful vibe was also shattered by war, but I am not going to talk about that just now. You/we are already overwhelmed.)

Well, nothing more can be done about the roof till spring, other than to make sure we keep that section raked. Limp into the future: that's my household motto.

Otherwise the day was easygoing (except for war). I caught up on a bunch of computer chores. We took a walk to the Asian grocery. I made potato pancakes for dinner. Young Chuck got his nails trimmed and later, with much effort and concentration, pushed a sliver of kindling under the rug.

This morning the little birds are singing loudly (despite war). They must be reacting to the longer days, and I wonder if they sense the tree sap rising as well. Today I'm going to walk up the street to see if our neighborhood snowdrops are visible yet. When I was in Brooklyn, I saw a few daffodil spikes poking up in front gardens, all ready to be squashed by the blizzard. Life is so obstinate. (As is death.)

I've been thinking about my manuscript . . . not fretting exactly; more just puzzling over my lifelong urge to make books that hardly anyone will read. If published, this would be my seventh full-length poetry collection, my eleventh book. The number is startling. How have I managed this? I still picture myself as the child with a scarlet "Sloppy and Lazy" sign pinned to her metaphorical chest.

There's a sadness in finishing a book, though of course there's pleasure too. Perhaps that's why I resist putting together manuscripts until all of a sudden I can't help myself and they fly together as if under enchantment. The emotional complications: why-bother intersecting with ambition . . . not ambition as in fame or any expectation of readership. Rather, as in climbing the impossible path. The book as the pause, as one acknowledges the ever harder task to come.

You know the painting I mean.

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What a lovely, slow Saturday morning--waking to sunshine and no alarm. Now, freshly showered, I sit with my cup and saucer gazing into blue sky, bare branches, glinting snowpack. An invisible crow complains. Young Chuck peers at me through the balusters. The little house quietly breathes. I have nothing particular to do.

Yesterday we had our last zoom meeting before Sarasota. It seems this trip is really going to happen: soon a gang of pallid northern artists will be lurching among snowbirds and hungover college students and long-suffering year-rounders, the four of us gawking naively at tiki bars and roseate spoonbills and expecting alligators to slither out from behind every palm tree. Florida of the Imagination: sinkholes, Republicans, theme parks, hurricanes, poisonous snakes, sunburns, Florida Man, revisionist history, orange juice spurting from every water fountain. Who knows what's in store for us?

Well, for a few more days my life will remain safely refrigerated. Today temperatures are supposed to rise to a balmy 40 degrees, so maybe I can go for a walk without wearing a wooly hat. The chickadees are singing happy tunes, and I ought to figure out my seed order, and yesterday Chuck was amazed by the sight of a possum trundling up the neighbor's driveway. Signs of spring in the frozen north! Who needs manatees when you have a bedraggled possum eating snacks right outside your very own window?

I'm feeling somewhat more pulled together this morning, which is a good thing as I've got a new editing project to start today and a final pre-Sarasota faculty zoom meeting this afternoon, plus various house obligations in between. In two weeks I'll be in Florida, which is hard to fathom. Tom seems more focused on it than I am: he actually bought new sneakers for the occasion, and a new bathing suit. Acquiring new clothes never even occurred to me. But then again, as he somewhat smugly informed me, "You'll be working. I'll be on vacation."

In other news: yesterday I took the plunge and sent the new poetry manuscript off to a publisher. My hopes are not high; few people have high hopes when they send off a poetry manuscript. But it's a first try . . . a first trial, I almost wrote, which is maybe more accurate. Few things are more depressing than serial manuscript rejections.

In the meantime I'll undoubtedly keep fidgeting with it, though I probably won't make major changes, at least not in this iteration. The manuscript came together quickly, once I actually allowed myself to focus on it, and that is my usual pattern, both with individual poems and collections. Once I get going, I revise at white heat: most poems are finished within days; few go longer than a few weeks. The collections, too, declare themselves emphatically. I am bossed around by my work.

Greetings from the old familiar couch corner.

I walked into the house just before 8 p.m., very glad to be home. As predicted, Young Chuck had decided I was no longer in the picture so was highly confused to see me again. But after leaping at me from around corners a few times, he decided to go with the flow and pretend I'd never been away. So the three of us had a cozy evening, and I went to bed as soon as I could, and now I am blinkily trying to remember how to start my day at 5 in the morning. Brooklyn time is not like Maine time.

Today I need to figure out what must get done: laundry, housework, catching up on mail, returning a library book, dealing with work stuff . . . Regular life is a blur.

What an odd visit this has been, so unexpectedly long and packed with event. The evening at Ragtime might have happened 6 weeks ago instead of 6 days ago. But today, finally, I'll be dragging my suitcase through Manhattan slush piles, all hopes pinned on the doughty Maine bus that will take me home. Chuck has probably forgotten I exist. But I know Tom hasn't.

Yesterday's snow fell hard and fast till midafternoon and then suddenly began to melt. So, by evening, restaurants and a few storefronts were beginning to reopen, light traffic had picked up on the streets, and the city was returning to its accustomed hum. There's still a giant mess out there: corners and crossings thick with slush, cars buried in snow and plow crud. I expect the commute will be ugly today, what with transportation delays and sidewalk despair. I'm not sorry I'll be zoom-teaching from the apartment rather than traversing the snow piles, though my setup will certainly be awkward. There are not a lot of good choices: too many dark corners without outlets, too many odd little islands of wobbly internet. So the best solution seems to be propping myself up in bed with the laptop on my lap. Not exactly a professional look, but one must make do.

 NYC Blizzard Photo Gallery

5th Avenue in Brooklyn around 7:30 a.m. It's a major commercial thoroughfare but we were walking straight down the middle of the street. Hard to tell exact accumulation because of the wind, but definitely pushing 2 feet.

6th Avenue in Brooklyn, mostly residential. It's a great day to have no responsibility for shoveling out a car.

The back courtyard of the bar. First we shoveled this. Then we had to close the umbrella and shovel the whole thing again.

Steve's next-door neighbor, sculpting a polar bear.