All day yesterday a cold wind blustered, and this morning it is still charging among the branches, whistling around corners, prying down collars, wriggling between buttons. 

I love a walk in the wind, and I'm looking forward to one later this morning, but for the moment I'm happy to be snug. It's Friday again, it's winter again . . . time yawns and stretches under its shaggy blanket . . . and what's with all of this personification? I've apparently contracted some kind of Dickensian virus.

I spent much of yesterday organizing packets for the zoom class, finalizing the syllabus, putting my thoughts and paperwork in order, which means that today I can step back from teaching chores and turn my thoughts to this afternoon's confab with Teresa and Jeannie. We've got poem drafts to share, books to discuss, maybe a group workshop proposal to consider. Something is afoot in our collaborative work, and whether that will emerge as a presentation, as a publication is unclear. But we're all aware that something intriguing is beginning to happen.

This morning I saw Carlene Gadapee's new review of Calendar--such a careful examination, such a close and intimate exploration of the poems. I found myself blinking away tears. It is so moving to be read. As I age I think more and more about the circle of people who live around the work, the poems like burning logs, the faces around them flickering in the firelight--these people who feed the poems, knowing or not knowing that they've done so, readers and characters, friends and ancestors. The work cannot exist without their oxygen. 

Though T and I didn't do anything spectacular yesterday, we thoroughly celebrated the Major Holiday That Doesn't Demand Travel or Presents or Large Meals. He slept late, I wallowed with a Le Carre novel, we went for a walk after the rain ended, I made naan and dal with fried spices, he installed a few more kitchen-cabinet doors . . . It was strange but nice to quit our jobs in the middle of the week and enjoy a day without demands. Maybe every Wednesday should be a day off.

But, alas, it is over, and this morning, like most of you, we are climbing back onto the work train. I'll be spending the bulk of my day organizing packets for my upcoming zoom class. Teresa and I are excited about the format of this session, but it is requiring a great deal of administrative preparation, and everything needs to be finalized before I leave for Brooklyn next week.

And I've got a grant application to finish, and a high school class to consider. And tonight I'll want to go out to write--given that I was in Vermont last Thursday and will be in NY next Thursday, I really can't miss this week's gathering. So that means cooking something or other for a potluck and figuring out a writing prompt to share.

It will be a poetic and pleasant workday, as workdays go, and I am not complaining even one bit. But I am tired of waking up to alarm clocks. When I imagine retiring, I never imagine not working . . . but I do imagine what it might be like to never leap up to another alarm again.

It is the first day of January in the little northern city by the sea. Cold rain is sluicing, rattling, pouring. Under the glow of streetlights and holiday lights, the road ripples with current, a small river hurtling toward the bay. We are besieged by storm.

Of course I lit a fire in the wood stove as soon as I came downstairs. If a nor'easter is my holiday, then I'll enjoy it. Hot coffee, bright flames, a fat book.

And so here I sit in my familiar couch corner, rain beating at roof and panes, logs flickering, cat in his chair, darkness faintly unfolding into daylight.

Yesterday evening we walked over to a friend's house and sat with her family around the fire pit for an hour or so, drinking beer, talking, and then she said, "Let's write down something we hope for in 2025 and toss it into the flames." So we did that.

And this morning I am conning over my hope, which was a plain and straightforward one, a gardener's hope: "I hope spring will come back." I don't know why that was the sentence that came to me, but I wrote it down and flicked the paper into the fire, and now, as the new year opens, raw and wet, I am imagining the roots of trees, the quiet patience of plants, waiting, waiting, as the hemisphere slowly turns its face toward the sun.

What are my hopes for the new year? That my beloveds thrive. That our democracy clings to life. That the crocuses will open again. At this moment, I'm not feeling covetous for myself. I already have so much. Love and friendship and a vocation and health and memory and a dear small home. What more could I possibly need?

A burst of rain kicks at the windows. Embers glow red-orange in the stove. The house is tidy: swept and mopped and dusted; white counters gleaming, dishes shining on their shelves. The shabby furniture, the rough walls, the scarred floors, the ugly bathrooms . . . they are what they are. This shelter was built in 1948 as working-class housing, and so it remains. A plain roof over our heads. A place to call home.

The cat sleeps on his chair. My darling sleeps in our bed. The gale moans. Sunrise is no more than blue shadow framed by the bare arms of trees.

Happy new year, dear ones. May you be wide-eyed. May you be warm. May you be madly in love.