I would like to be asleep, but the cat said no, so here I am, sitting up in the dark, waiting for the kettle to boil.

* * *

Yesterday the electrical inspector said yes to the kitchen wiring, so today Tom will be able to start actual work on the floors and walls. Perhaps he'll get me started on urethaning the upstairs floors, but at noon I am going to Westbrook Library to listen to my friend Baron Wormser read from his new novel, so that might mess up the timing.

I have been steadily copying out Philip Levine poems. They are very tired pieces, exhausted by loss and aging. It is sad to live inside them, but sweet as well. Yet unusually they are not triggering any need to make poems. My writing life doesn't have the wherewithal to exist just now.

Last night Tom and I went out for a late dinner to our favorite neighborhood restaurant. We sat at the bar and ate Spanish ham and brussels sprouts and smoked rabbit and grilled mullet, and we admired the bartender's athletic drink-shaking, and I had a little talk with another local poet/teacher who happened to come in with her partner. It all felt good.

And another nice thing happened: I got an email indicating that a really well known small press is considering Chestnut Ridge. No promises, no reason to believe the editors will decide to take it . . . but they've held it since last March, and have had other open reading periods since then. So someone, maybe, is giving it a third or fourth look.

* * *

Of course now that I'm awake, the cat has gone back to bed.