This week is flying by. It's hard to believe Thursday is already here. Maybe that's because I've been so busy--juggling editing, teaching, planning, website work: loads of finicky little this-n-thats that suck up hours.

Anyway, today. Exercise and work in the morning. Visit with a friend midday. Complicated unloading of bulk organic lamb into my tiny freezer. (I can hook you up with a top-notch Vermont farmer if you're interested.) Lamb burgers, butternut squash, Brussels sprouts for dinner. 

Outside, the wail of an ambulance. Inside, the clicks and groans of modernity . . . refrigerator, furnace, clock. On the table are the books I'm reading for myself: Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire; Scott Weidensaul's A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds. Has every day of my life been entangled with a book?

And then there are the books I consult as I prep for classes--this week, collections by Vievee Francis, Maurice Manning, Sylvia Plath, Ruth Stone, Robert Hayden, Katie Farris.

And then there are the books I copy out: presently, Dante's Inferno.

And then there are the books I'm reading with other people: at the moment, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and, soon, Virgil's Aeneid.

You'd think I wouldn't have time to do anything else, but somehow the books simply fill in the gaps, like styrofoam peanuts in a shipping box. I read for 5 or 10 minutes at a time, 50 times a day. I read while I stir soup. I read in the bathroom and during lunch and while I'm trying to settle the cat down for a nap. Always the book is at hand.