I didn't set foot outside the house yesterday, other than to empty the kitchen recycling pail into the outdoor bin. Even in the dead of winter that is unusual behavior for me, but these editing projects have chained me to the desk. Today, though, I've got a walk date, so to hell with the stack, at least for an hour.

I don't feel like I have much interesting chat to share. For obvious reasons, I never talk on this blog about other people's manuscripts, but other people's manuscripts are presently absorbing the bulk of my days. Around the edges I am making chicken adobo, folding towels, reading George Eliot, doing sun salutations on my mat, admonishing Chuck about jumping on the kitchen counter, answering emails, lugging firewood up from the basement, brewing yet another cup of tea, texting my kid about baseball trades, and not sleeping quite as much as I wish I were.

The fact that I am not engaged in organizing a new poetry manuscript is beginning to weigh on me. 

It's always a relief when an insomnia cycle eases. I've been sleeping better for the past couple of nights, and the muscles I pulled in my lower back seem to be easing a bit as well, so I'm hoping to enjoy standing up and sitting down again too. I'll get onto my mat today and keep working at them. This aging stuff is annoying . . . an Alice sensation of running as fast as I can just to stay in one place. But so far I do keep running.

I got the bathrooms and floors cleaned yesterday, so now I get to devote the bulk of the rest of the week to desk work--the endless editing, prepping for Monson, my stack of reading obligations. In addition to The Pillow Book and Dream of Dreams, I've started rereading George Eliot's Adam Bede and John Fowles's The Maggot. And my new copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's verse novel Aurora Leigh arrived in the mail yesterday, which will be my next reading project with Teresa.

T is upstairs opening and closing drawers. Young Chuck purrs into my ear. Dark peers through the cold windowpanes. The poems wander like wraiths, wordless in the bare morning.

It's Monday, it's cold, and I have a lot to get done today, both desk work and housework. Yesterday afternoon T and I went downtown to to see The Testament of Ann Lee, though both of us liked it less than we'd hoped to. Around the edges I finished rereading Murdoch's The Nice and the Good, made inroads into The Pillow Book and Dream of Dreams, sent off a sonnet draft to Jeannie for our round-robin project and a cover blurb to a friend with a forthcoming chapbook. It was a full day.

I'm starting to make plans for my trip to New York. The memorial reading for Baron will be at Poets House on the afternoon of Saturday, February 21. Tickets are free, but they do ask you to register, so you should, if you're thinking of attending. The Brooklyn kids have also bought tickets for us to see Ragtime at Lincoln Center. This was one of Paul's favorite musicals when he was in high school; it was on constant rotation in the car when I drove him back and forth, so we can sing all of the songs and of course I know the Doctorow novel very well too. Plus, I'm not sure I've ever seen anything at Lincoln Center before, so that will be a novelty. Probably I'll meet friends for meals or a drink. Probably I'll spend some time at the Frick or the Morgan or the Neue Galerie--unless I'm aiming for a particular exhibition, I like the smaller, house-based museums more than the cavernous ones. It's a bad time of year for botanical gardens, but if the weather's mild I might walk the High Line. I'm looking forward to everything. I haven't been to the city since early last summer, and I do love it.

In the meantime, here I am, at home all this week, ready to be assaulted by staggering piles of editing and a long list of house chores. I keep imagining that one of these days I'll get back to seriously putting together a next manuscript, but when?

The full moon is a silver blur among the bare branches of my neighbor's big black walnut tree. And the cold clings. It's presently three degrees in the little northern city by the sea, with a wind chill of minus ten, and we're not forecast to get a break anytime soon.

I'm back to sleeping badly, but so it goes, so it goes. There are worse things in this world than lying awake and staring at the moon. At least it's Sunday: no one rushing through chores or out the door. Though I can't sleep, Tom is having no trouble, and that is a comfort to me. Young Charles prowls upstairs and down. The kitchen clock ticks. Remnants of heat sift from the registers.

I worked on a couple of poem drafts yesterday, read the books I needed to read. Midday T and I went for a cold walk through the cemetery. For dinner I breaded and sautéed pollock, steamed some mixed grains, made a sauce of yogurt, red onion, and capers, tossed julienned radishes and carrots in vinegar and salt and topped them with a pinch of the micro-lettuce I'd sprouted on the kitchen counter. Winter, winter, winter: how my eyes long for even a sprig of green.

I don't mean to complain. I love all seasons, I love the cold, I'm interested in it all . . . but at this time of year I do feel starved for color. Thank goodness for the vivid glow of carrots, pale lavender-rose of an Asian radish, flash of April in a lettuce sprout.

This is what downtown Portland looked like yesterday afternoon--more than a thousand people gathered in Monument Square, though the temperature was 15 degrees and plummeting. I was thrilled to see so many high school-age protesters, many of them sheepishly bumping up against their also-protesting teachers. I was impressed by the number of businesses that had chosen to close in solidarity. I was pleased by the excellent behavior of the police, who managed traffic and the march route efficiently but were otherwise low key in all ways. I was very glad to be there with my friends, our little bloc of poets.

But I was also very glad to walk back into my warm house and unthaw myself. Though I was wearing three layers on my legs, two pairs of socks, insulated boots, two coats, two scarves, two pairs of gloves, and a hat, I still came home numb with cold, especially my feet. It was exactly the right night for noodle bowls--udon, roasted tofu, a soy-marinated egg, and stir-fried cabbage in citrus-chicken broth. There's no better comfort than noodles and broth.

Now, at first light, the temperature outside is minus four, but the house is snug and warm. Our new expensive furnace sure heats up the place better than the old one did. This weekend I need to read further into The Pillow Book and Tabucchi's Dream of Dreams; I need to write a blurb for a friend's chapbook; I need to work on some poem drafts and clean the bathrooms and do the grocery shopping. I am looking forward to taking a break from editing: I've been driving myself on that project this week, and it's not been easy work.

I think my favorite sign yesterday was the one I saw a high schooler carrying: Young People Are Fucking Sick of This. You and me both, honey.

 After his terrible glass-smashing night, Young Charles has returned to his usual wide-eyed coziness--snuggling, chirping, rolling around on the rugs, and otherwise behaving as if he would never, ever, ever consider jumping onto a shelf at midnight and pushing crystal onto the floor. Everyone slept well, and I am very much enjoying not vacuuming at 5 a.m.

It's another frigid morning out there, temperature hovering just above zero, snowpack stiff and squeaky under foot. Shortly I'll swathe myself in coat and scarf and start hauling bins to the curb, but for a few more minutes I can linger here in coffee warmth.

Today is the national strike, and many businesses in Portland are either closed or donating significant portions of their proceeds to immigrant aid organizations. High schoolers plan to walk out of school and march. There will be a big protest gathering downtown this afternoon, which I'll attend with some of my poets. Folks in this town are righteously pissed off.

In my Monson class on Wednesday, I used a passage and a series of writing prompts with the kids that turned out to be a very effective way to get young writers in a conservative district to think hard about current events without calling out anyone's politics by name. I am happy to share this lesson plan with other teachers. If you would like a copy, please send me a message.

I woke at some deep point of the night to the sound of shattering glass. Tom, who'd fallen asleep on the couch, roused himself and I heard him sweeping up something fragile. When he finally wandered up to bed, I asked what had happened, and he said Chuck had jumped onto the kitchen counter, and then onto a shelf of glassware above the counter, and pushed two crystal glasses that T had inherited from his grandfather onto the floor.

So Young Charles is in the doghouse this morning . . . theoretically, of course, because he has the brain of a goldfish and has no idea he's done anything wrong.

Well, it's only stuff, and we have more of that than we need. I ran the vacuum cleaner in the kitchen at 5 a.m., and for Chuck that counted as the most horrible of punishments, so I guess we're all eye-for-an-eye now.

The temperature's not much warmer here in the south than it was in the north: 6 degrees this morning, and forecast to drop to zero over the next couple of days. I do hope I'll get out into the Arctic for a few walks, but mostly I'll be back at my desk for the rest of the week, straining away at a giant editing project, trying to catch up on writing and reading. I'm glad to say that yesterday's class went really well: the kids jumped into revision in the way geese splash down onto a flooded golf course--much metaphorical honking and wing flapping and mud kicking. It was a pleasure to watch.