Tonight another snowstorm is pushing in, and today will be a day of steel and grim skies as the clouds move closer. I've got a dentist appointment this afternoon, and I'll probably run over to the store afterward, to fetch in whatever needs to be fetched so that I can close down the hatches tomorrow.

I've been making good progress with the editing, and yesterday I had an excellent meeting with staff at the new neighborhood bookstore, where I've arranged an event for my writing salon in April. Then I spent the evening workshopping poems, and that was productive . . . everyone's draft was fascinating, and I felt relieved about my own too.

Outside there's a faint blue dawn--sky lightening, earth still hunkering in darkness. I love this lonely hour: one foot in morning, the other in night. In Harmony I would look out into the clearing, into the circle of spruce trees, sharp silhouettes against a bowl of heaven. Here the sky is a jagged clutter of chimneys, roofs, a steeple . . . a different sort of beauty, but just as lonely. It is the hour that makes the loneliness, the saturated blues and blacks, the deep and simple shadows, the foreknowledge that it will end at any moment, when ordinary day steps from behind the proscenium.