Thin new snow crusts sidewalks and roofs, a dull glitter under the bluing dawn.

I'm thinking about James Baldwin's words, from The Fire Next Time: "The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose."

Last night for dinner I made chicken noodle soup, and herbed rye bread, and an apple salad. I sat in front of a warm fire and read a novel while my beloved washed the dishes. No bombs dropped on our house.

I'm thinking about Tu Fu's words, from "Dawn over the Mountains":

The city is silent,

Sound drains away,

Buildings vanish in the light of dawn

Yesterday I worked on poems with a sixteen-year-old girl. Yesterday my twenty-four-year old son called me excitedly about Macbeth. Yesterday my fifty-five-year-old sister wrote, "Barf," in a text message. Yesterday my cat tried to invite a possum into the house.

I'm thinking about Wisława Szymborska's poem "The End and the Beginning": 

After every war

someone has to clean up.

Things won’t

straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble

to the side of the road,

so the corpse-filled wagons

can pass.