I'm late writing to you this morning because T forgot to set his alarm. Thus, we had an extra, unexpected, pleasant hour of sleep followed by a silly rush, but finally I've found a moment to sit down.

Yesterday was packed with busyness--editing and housework and snow shoveling, plus that TV interview dropped into the midst. But the interview is behind me now, and the floors are done for another week, and it didn't snow any more last night, so my day, despite the alarm silliness, should assume a more dignified pace.

I hope to get out for a walk, though I have no idea what the state of the sidewalks might be. Temperatures warmed up last night, then dropped again early this morning, so everything could be ice. I hope not, as I'm feeling a little housebound and could use a shot of wind and air and stride. But such is February in Maine.

Now laundry churns in the basement; the furnace grumbles. I dreamed about kissing a guy I have no interest in kissing in waking life, and I'm still kind of annoyed with my brain for being so obnoxious. But of course my brain could care less.

I need to run away from this letter now . . . wash the breakfast dishes, sweep up the kitchen crumbs, hang the laundry--my morning duties, day in, day out.

Yesterday, on video, I was being treated solemnly as a Poet. Today I am cleaning the cat box and scouring the sink.

Today is the day that I'm being interviewed and recorded for a Massachusetts TV program called Write Now. I admit to being a little nervous. I've got no idea what questions might be asked, and of course I picture myself stumbling and flailing. I expect I'm overreacting. Probably things will be fine. The whole situation is vanity, of course: how do I look? how do I sound? I think I would prefer to be the person who doesn't care if her hair is sticking up strangely. But I'm afraid I do care.

A few snowflakes fell as we walked out to our friends' house for dinner last night, and now I see that an inch or so has accumulated overnight on cars and sidewalks. It's Monday, back-to-work day, though really I worked for much of the weekend too, on teaching chores, judging chores, house chores, plus my Lyrical Ballads homework. Off and on I've been feeling slightly under the weather: packed sinuses and a vaguely uneasy gut--nothing debilitating but my energy level is just a little skewed.

However, onward. I'll get onto my mat this morning. I'll do some editing, and I'll sit for that interview, and I'll drink a lot of ginger tea. Rereading Emma has been a real comfort. I had long phone conversations with both of my boys yesterday, and that pleasure lingers. It was good to sit around our friends' table, and with a baby there too! I hardly ever get to spend time with babies these days, and I miss them.

I'm sure this week's news will be crammed with arrows and knives. But I did get to watch a baby happily stuff pie into his mouth with his fist. That does, for some reason, help.

February. Sunday morning. Four degrees above zero. The neighborhood is draped with snow, the furnace growls without cease, and the cat has returned to bed. I'd like to light a fire in the wood stove except that I have to scrape out the ashes first, which means venturing outside, which means piling on the clothes, which requires more get-up-and-go than I have at this moment.

I spent two hours yesterday on a zoom call with Jeannie and Teresa, digging into the poems we'd all written to a common prompt, asking each other questions about how the drafts had taken shape, talking about what we were reading and how we were reading . . . In the midst of this Teresa burst out, "We're all working at such a high level!" And I thought with shock, How brave to say something like that about oneself!--to speak without boasting but with clarity and excitement and confidence. I don't know if I am quite able to mouth those words myself. Yet it was beautiful to hear them.

The American nightmare continues to unfold. Every evening I have to coach myself away from panic into sleep. But in the parallel world that is my daily life I am at the top of my game. Granted, my game is small and economically embarrassing. But I am writing well, I am reading well, I am teaching well; I am cooking good meals and managing the household and upholding my role as an interested and eager partner and parent and friend.

How long can such worlds exist in parallel? Part of the problem with being so well read is that I am all too aware of the patterns of history. I don't need to doom-scroll the daily news to recognize what I'm seeing.

What is my task as a writer of these letters? Is it to make you feel worse? Is it to act as if everything will be fine? Neither approach seems right at all. 

What do artists do in the midst of chaos and fear? They do what they can do, which is to keep making art.  And art is not one thing. It is an individual's slow and sudden interaction with materials and a moment. Every day offers a thousand variations. 

This blog has about eight regular visitors, and few of you are full-time artists. Some are serious readers. Some are serious teachers. Some are serious gadflies. Some are serious community members. Some fit artistic endeavors around the edges. Some don't.

I have no authority to offer advice, no ability either. All I can say is: The work you do matters. Keep doing it.

A fresh coating of snow fell over night, and flakes are still drifting down. It's dark outside, and the neighborhood is a mystery of gleam and shadow, a noir film.

Yesterday I wrote out my plans for the upcoming revision weekend I'll be leading, always an intense process, more like writing a private essay for myself than a creating a brisk syllabus. In making these kinds of classes I find I have to explain myself to myself, examine the workings of my own mind in order to come to any kind of settlement about what can be taught. And revision is a tricky and resistant subject, one that can bring our timidities to the fore. It is a chance for teachers to be autocrats. It is a chance for participants to be cowed. It is a chance for teachers to overlook the patterns of their own imagination. It is a chance for participants to be defensive. None of these behaviors is useful to the poem, or to us.

The chaos in Washington. Already, crowd gunfire batters our humanism and we're only two weeks into this ordeal. I turn pages, I ponder writing prompts, I scribble notes about craft and storyworld, and my attempts may as well be a dream, or a hallucination. Who do I think I am, anyway, to care so hard about these things?

Next door, my neighbor's snowblower bursts into roar. Slowly I watch his silhouette pace back and forth up his driveway. Probably he'll clear our sidewalk too. We neither ask for nor deserve this attention; we're completely capable of shoveling ourselves out. Nonetheless, he offers this kindness, repeatedly and without words.

There is no way to square such plain generosity with the contorted vengefulness that is our new regime. It is like we have been invaded by aliens. And yet, somehow, the aliens are us.

Today I will read Austen's Emma. I will read the introduction to Lyrical Ballads. I will talk to Teresa and Jeannie about poems. I will play cards and laugh with Tom. But I hear the marching.

When I left Wellington yesterday, the time was 7:30 a.m. and the temperature had plummeted to one degree above zero, with a vicious wind. Winter was the winter I remember, the real central Maine aggravation: S lugging red-hot ashes out of the stove because he can't let the fire go out, ever. The washing-machine drain frozen so the hose has to drain into the bathtub. The kitchen water running all day and all night so the pipes from the spring don't ice up. And that storm. Lord.

The roads were still bad, but passable, until I got to Skowhegan. Then they cleared out, and by the time I hit the highway I was driving at normal speed. So I made it home a little after ten, then immediately rushed out again to get my car to the shop for an oil change and gradually brought myself to the stage of being able to do a little work at my desk. But I was jangled. That trip was an ordeal.

An evening at home with T was a panacea, as was a night's sleep in my own bed, and this morning I'm prepared to be normal again. I've got to focus on prepping for an upcoming zoom class, and then fit in some editing around the edges and start reading my Lyrical Ballads homework, and then there are those damn seed orders to deal with, and it's trash day, and I should get on my mat, and I'm way behind on laundry . . .

At least it's Friday. At least I don't have to drive hundreds of miles anywhere this weekend. On Saturday I'll have a zoom confab with Teresa and Jeannie. On Sunday we've been invited out to dinner. But none of that will take me out of my own footpath. What a relief.

I write to you yet again from the homeland because yesterday turned out to be just the day I dreaded: a terrible snowy drive up to Monson, then only two kids showing up for class, and then a horrible snowy drive south . . . until I hit a roadblock in Harmony, where a tractor-trailer had jackknifed and was completely blocking the road, and where a detour sign pointed me miles out of my way along a barely plowed, rarely traveled route. At that point I threw in the towel and went back to my friends' house and begged for shelter. Later that afternoon A saw on the news that 95 had been shut down because of another truck accident, so I was even more relieved I hadn't tried to power through. And of course we had a great evening together: making homemade corn tortillas, hanging out and chattering. Still, it was a such a stressful and exhausting day, and I don't want to do it again.

Now it is 3 degrees and the wind is wailing outside my window, and downstairs S is clanking the stove, and I am attempting to encourage myself to get up and face the drive home. At least the plows will have been through by now, and I'm not on a schedule, so I don't have to force myself into wretched conditions again . . . though there's always ice to worry about.

Ugh. Anyway, for the moment I am warm and sort of relaxed.

It's dark, and I don't know if snow is falling yet up here in the north country. It's very cold, though--my phone says 8 degrees--and I can hear Steve downstairs stoking the stoves.

The drive up yesterday was windy and increasingly frigid, and when I arrived the forest was creaking and groaning, a stiff and painful sound like bones rubbing together.

I've got a poem up on Vox Populi this morning, "Home Burial," one of a series that borrows titles from other writers and then uses them differently. It's a summer poem, so it feels odd to see it now, in deep winter. But perhaps the Frost reference is winter enough.

At a little after 10 yesterday morning I was standing at my desk, editing a chapter, when suddenly the house began to shake. I thought big truck going by and then I thought jackhammer? but the shaking would not stop. Was my furnace getting ready to blow? Could this be . . . an earthquake?

As soon as the shaking ended, I texted my neighbor: What was that? And she, redoubtable researcher, immediately verified earthquake, centered off the coast of York, 40 miles south of Portland.

I am an East Coaster without earthquake experience, so a mild, damage-free, but very noticeable temblor was pretty exciting for me. But also it was a taste of what-might-have-been. Just a bit stronger, just a bit longer, and bad things would have started to happen.

Well, it wasn't what I'd expected from my Monday: to be in an earthquake, in Maine. But so it was, and for some reason it lifted my spirits, kind of like the eclipse did last year. Oh, earth and heaven: they've always got something up their sleeves.

**

Today I'll hit the road again, heading north for a night in the homeland, then tomorrow on to Monson. I'm still not feeling tiptop--maybe an incipient sinus infection, I'm wondering, though my cheekbones feel less pressure this morning than they did yesterday. But I'm okay, I'm fine, and I'm trying to think bravely about snow. So this morning I'll get onto my mat, I'll hammer out some editing, I'll gather my belongings, and then after lunch I'll drive.

January is slipping away; it's almost gone, and the days are lengthening, the angle of the sun has shifted. For me, it's an odd, uneasy time of year--my body yearns toward spring, but winter resists. Up north, Groundhog Day is a time to examine the firewood supply. You hope you've got half your wood left . . . because there's lot more cold ahead.

And here we are at Monday again.

This week will be a different variety of busy, the on-the-road sort, unfortunately with snow in the mix. I'll head north tomorrow, teach on Wednesday, and then, with luck, make my way home that afternoon--if I can. I'm already trying not to be anxious.

Today, at least, I'm home, with a pile of house chores and errands and desk work on the docket, but also a walk with a friend, and, I hope, a nap because I didn't sleep very well last night.

I'm still reading the Ann Beattie stories, still wrestling with a poem draft . . . feeling, for some reason, slightly under the weather, a little achy, a little tense, hoping that time and brisk air will iron out my twitchiness.

But the house is peaceable. Coffee and warmth. The new cabinets gleaming softly under lamplight. I daresay my body will snap out of its sorrows.

It's almost February. Soon snowdrops will unfold in the neighbors' front yards. Already I've heard the chickadees singing their spring songs. I need to work on my seed orders. I need to think about planting, hard as that is to imagine.

Miracles await, and disaster also, and perhaps that is why my body is sad today. It is hard to know how to be ready for anything.

I spent a long day driving into the western mountains and back, but the weather was fine and bright and I hadn't been out that way for several years, so it was good to see old haunts. I've never been a skier but my band used to play at Sugarloaf now and again, and T and I used to drive out that direction for various reasons. But since I've been in Portland, I haven't revisited.

Maine has such variety of landscape. Now I live between the southern coast and the midcoast, which are vastly different from one another--the south has sand beaches, the midcoast is long fingers of tidal rivers, and then Downeast, further up the coast, is granite cliffs. Harmony is in the highlands--rolling hills and forest, at the edge of the true mountain swells, the spine of northern Appalachia that includes ski peaks such as Sugarloaf and Sunday River as well as storied Katahdin. And then there's Aroostook County up north, flat and arable. And then there are the Belgrade lakes, in the southwest. And of course Moosehead Lake, tucked into the crease of the mountains. And our big rivers and their watersheds--the Kennebec, the Penobscot, the Androscoggin . . .

As I was waiting for my reading to begin yesterday, I was pondering the big map of Maine pinned up over the library coffee machine--thinking of how much I love this state, thinking how much of it I still haven't seen. My children, away in their city lives, busy and engaged, still pine for the forest and skies of their childhood. I grew up mostly in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and while I miss certain things about them, I can't say that I pine. I do pine for my grandfather's farm in western Pennsylvania, but it's more the people I pine for than the landscape. But Maine in and of itself is eminently worth pining for--stark and stunning, a constant surprise, a vast and beautiful land, welcoming and forbidding, difficult to forget.

The reading itself went well--a small audience but chatty and engaged, and it included an ex-neighbor of mine from Portland who'd moved out there last summer, so that was sweet. And while I didn't manage to get home before dark, I did get home, which is what counts. And when I walked in, T had a fire going in the stove, and he'd made reservations for us at the restaurant around the corner, so we had a cozy and undemanding date night to cap my long day.

Today will be slower, I hope. I'll probably do a lick of housework. I might grocery-shop. We're considering going skating. I'll watch the Bills game. I'll peck at poem revisions and figure out something for dinner.

Head down, head held high. Trudge forward into the wind.

The cold continues, one frigid morning after the next. I'm glad we have at least a little snow on the ground as insulation for the plants. I'm glad of a warm house and hot coffee. I'm not so glad about spending five-plus hours in the car for the sake of a twenty-minute reading, but it will be nice to see Julia and listen to her new poems. And the weather looks to be clear and I should get home by dark.

Yesterday I finished my first pass through the writing samples I'm judging--a giant job, done, until the next stages are scheduled. And I'm now also more than halfway done with the editing project, and I've prepped for next week's high schoolers as well. It's been a nose-to-the-grindstone week for sure, but oddly it hasn't been a frantic one. Every task seemed to fall between its allotted lines, a kind of work-dance, helped by long stretches of solitude and a clean and uncrowded house.

And so here I sit, temporarily at rest. The week, outside of this bubble of calm, has been bad--wincingly painful, horrifying, exactly what you and I knew it would be. He is a monster. Though I am still not reading or listening to news, the scent of rot is overpowering.

Considering this letter to you structurally, I see that this is the moment when I might be expected to toss out a string of rhetorical questions--what are our responsibilities as artists during this era of darkness? what do we owe to our communities? is poetry resistance? am I selfish for caring so hard about the small points of light? . . . and so on, etcetera, ad infinitum, blah blah blah, sigh.

The truth is that I have no idea. I have no idea at all.

I am sixty years old. I read a lot of books and I write a lot of books but I have never earned enough money to rise out of the working class. I am white and cis-gendered and thus privileged. I am a woman and aging and thus not privileged. I am successful, insofar as I do work that I value, insofar as I have raised children who are good, insofar as I am loved. I am invisible. I am financially precarious.

I have no power, except in very small and private realms. Every day I teeter between strength and weakness. All I can do is keep teetering, I guess.

And I do grip at a few sureties. It is right to care about others. It is right to believe in art. It is right to take science seriously. It is right to love the earth.

When we were in Brooklyn, Stephen asked us to take anything we wanted from Ray's bookshelves, so I brought home, among other things, a collection of Ann Beattie's stories, which I've started reading this week. Her abrupt, chopped-off endings and dissociated characters have started to feel like another aspect of winter, or possibly a version of imaginary insomnia. Cozy they are not, though I'm intrigued by them, even excited. Her endings mystify me. How did she decide to make this moment the ending, or this one? I keep flipping back through a story's pages, attempting to track her trajectory, to pin down some hint or metaphor that might lead me to her chosen conclusion or turn, and she keeps eluding me. It's interesting to be so baffled.

Meanwhile, here I am, inside another cold morning in the little northern city by the sea. The furnace growls and the cat sulks and crusty snow glitters under the streetlights. I've got to work on Monson teaching plans today and prep for tomorrow's reading with Julia and figure out how to drive to Carrabassett. I need to finish my judging assignment and simmer chicken stock and drag the recycling bin to the curb. Last night, during our writing group, I brought out a prompt based around myth and naming, and now this morning I feel like one giant myth of myself. Rosy-fingered Dawn may have gone gray, but she's still hurtling through her morning chores, bright lines of laundry fluttering in her wake.

Fourteen degrees this morning--a warmup of sorts, at least as far as the cat was concerned. He actually asked to go outside and even spent a whole three minutes sitting on the stoop before he changed his mind.

But now he's burrowed back into bed, and I am downstairs alone with the furnace growl and the clock tick and my small cup of coffee and my scattered thoughts.

Yesterday was another all-work-all-the-time day, but slowly, slowly I am scraping away at my tasks. I realize I should start pondering seed orders and garden plans, but I can't quite wrap my mind around ideations of spring yet. In deep cold, even an imagined outdoors feels like the first line of an adventure poem.

Today and tomorrow will be more of the same. I'll get onto my mat, I'll stand at my desk, I'll curl into my couch corner--editing, reading applications, planning classes, prepping for a reading, working on poem drafts. These first few days of the regime are just what we knew they would be--posturing and cruelty. 

I know there is such anguish in you

that you cannot say a single word.

--Anna Akhmatova, from "[The mysterious spring still lay under a spell]" (1917)

The deep-freeze continues in the little northern city by the sea--three degrees above zero this morning, and the cat refuses to even consider stepping outside. I think I'll take my morning walk in the afternoon.

That is one of the luxuries of moving off the farm: now nobody's life depends on my rushing outside into the worst possible weather. I don't have even woodshed chores; all of this season's fuel is already in the house. Easy heat, easy water, easy septic, easy light: I'm not sure I'll ever fully get used to this world. But on a frigid morning I'm glad to be grateful.

Yesterday was busy but productive--even, as paying work goes, enjoyable: editing at my desk all morning, then a break to clean floors, and then reading writing samples by the fire all afternoon. It was the venue that made the enjoyment possible. My study is cozy and bright, and a woodfire makes all tasks better; and while I have nothing good to say about vacuuming and mopping, I do appreciate the aftermath--bright floors and fresh soapy smells and the satisfaction of not having to do it again for another seven days.

Today will be more or less a repeat, minus the floors and plus a trip to the grocery store. I've got classwork to hammer out this week as well, but I think I'll push that forward into tomorrow. And I've got Saturday's reading to prep for, and a long drive into the western mountains to map out. I'll be appearing with Maine poet laureate Julia Bouwsma at the Carrabassett Public Library, 1:30 p.m., so if you happen to be anywhere near Sugarloaf that afternoon, come hang out with us.

In the meantime, I'm staying put, and apparently the cat is also staying put; and in a minute I'll put on the kettle and make a cup of tea and start fidgeting with my morning chores--making the bed, sorting laundry, washing the breakfast dishes; and outside cold hovers over the stiffened snow, and in my thoughts words sparkle and run like a spring river, dancing downstream so quickly that I barely glimpse their shapes.

Six degrees this morning, and the ground stiff with snow. This is the Maine I remember, the Maine of those long winters in Harmony . . . me in my coveralls breaking ice in the livestock water pails, the boys in their bright coats sliding down the moonspun driveway to wait for the schoolbus, a thread of smoke rising from the chimney as T tries to get the shop warm enough so that he can work without his gloves on.

I don't exactly miss all of that struggle, but elegy isn't about missing something. It's about knowing that it's gone.

Today T goes back to work, and I go back to work . . . though I worked yesterday too, and he did as well, but on loose time instead of on schedule. I edited a chapter and revised a poem and cleaned bathrooms and did laundry. He did some photo printing and editing, then hung the last of the kitchen-cupboard doors--these glass-faced beauties. 

His cabinet-making skills fill me with awe. It's hard to believe we possess such a lovely room. I could open and close those doors all day long.

But I won't. I'll get back to editing, I'll get back to reading writing samples, I'll finish the weekly house chores, and I'll run my thoughts over my teaching prep. I'll spend time on my mat and I'll spend time with a poem draft, and I'll try to hold onto my promise to myself: to endure this administration by focusing as hard as I can on the fabric of my community and on the exigencies of my art. I will not wallow in pundit mongering. I will not read fraudulent self-help memes. I will not groan and bewail on social media. We all know what we're in for, from him and from his pack of devils. What would Dante do? What would Milton do? What would Austen do? What would Baldwin do? They'd write and they'd read and they'd write. I think I will too.

I woke to snow glimmering under thin early-morning light---maybe six or seven inches of white, not a significant amount by north-country standards but by far our biggest accumulation of the season. I love snow, and I'm so glad to see it, and so glad Tom doesn't have to hurtle through it to work today.

An impasto of snow changes the daylight. For the moment, windowshine is cool and delicate; later in the day it will harshen to eye-splitting brilliance, but the gray bare-ground tones are gone, vanquished till snowmelt. Pale is the queen of the hour.

Tom is home today, but I will probably work, at least for a few hours--deal with editing or those writing samples or both; and I've got the week's housework to juggle, sheets and towels to launder, the regular weekly grind to manage, and lots of snow shoveling as well. I did read writing samples yesterday, so I'm not procrastinating, but the pressures of my schedule are looming . . . so much classwork ahead of me, weekend readings to travel for, that television interview to endure and presentations to prepare. What I am trying to do is not scare myself.

And even if I do have to work today, it will be far, far better than allowing myself to perseverate on the horrid chest thumping in Washington. I've got better things to do. Such as love my neighbor. Such as breathe.

This morning's sky is a pale blue-white, the color of skim milk. Storm behind us, storm on the way, but for the moment the air shimmers in silence, bare branches stark and still against the new daylight, earth and street sodden with yesterday's rain.

Snow will arrive. It will fall all night and into tomorrow, a gracious parenthesis to the long weekend, but for the moment a finger of sunshine pinkens the neighbor's vinyl siding, pokes through my windowpane, squints my eyes as I write about it.

Usually I rise before daybreak, do my first writing in darkness, but today I lolled, and daybreak arrived before I claimed my seat in the couch corner. I like the clean hues of sunrise; I like the egg-shaped moon, caught out of bed, still rolling across the firmament. I like writing the word firmament; I also like writing azure and cerulean. Before you know it, I will be telling you about the celestial orb as well. However, I draw the line at God's green earth. You will not hear me say anything about that.

I've got no big plans for the day, other than figuring out how to make dinner while watching the Bills-Ravens game that starts at 6:30. I've decided on chili, which can simmer while I'm fretting over the score. Yesterday I stocked up on food for the coming week and made a big sweep through the fish market in search of the best deals. I came home with two whole mackerel, a half-pound of North Atlantic shrimp, a pound of bluefin-tuna scraps for stir-fry, a pound of pollock fillets, a container of flash-frozen clams for chowder, and a baguette from one of the best bakeries in town, all for under $50. As you might expect, I was smug. All of that, along with a whole roasting chicken and tonight's chili, will keep us in interesting meals for quite a while.

So today I'll read and walk and do laundry and fiddle with poems and hang out with Tom and judge some writing samples and light the woodstove and talk to my kids and chop up peppers and onions and garlic and take an afternoon nap and bite my nails over the Ravens's run game.

But for now: This sunlight, etching the walls. This hour, patiently unfurling. 

Last night, as I was making dinner, Tom moseyed into the kitchen and mentioned that he would be home on Monday--a first, as MLK Day has never been a paid day off for him before. Suddenly, we've got another little blip of a holiday together . . . three whole mornings of not caring about the alarm clock, of peaceable coffee drinking, of nowhere-to-go-in-a-hurry blinks and yawns: a holiday from all of those travels--Vermont, Brooklyn, Monson crammed into the tight fold between the old and new years.

I'm not sure what we'll do with ourselves today. T's getting a haircut this morning, I need to buy groceries, but we may try to go ice skating before the rain and snow move in tonight and tomorrow. I'll have to work some this weekend: that judging stack is too thick for procrastination, but at least I can read writing samples on the couch by the fire.

For the past few days I've been rereading Larry McMurtry's novel Buffalo Girls. In my opinion he is vastly underrated as a writer. Yes, he won the Pulitzer for Lonesome Dove, but who speaks of him as a great artist? And yet he has enormous and sharp-eyed empathy, deep historical clarity; he is a masterful purveyor of the human comedy and its sorrows, and his dialogue is as brilliant as Dickens's. Buffalo Girls is a tale of the end of the Wild West, after Little Bighorn, after the Gold Rush, after the buffalo slaughter, as Buffalo Bill Cody is rounding up the old-timers to join his traveling show. One of the main characters is Calamity Jane, and McMurtry's delineation of her complex gender fluidity is delicate and expressive--especially notable in a novel that was first published in 1990, decades before the subject was a common matter of discussion.

Larry McMurtry wrote many, many books, and they're not all equally good. But I would argue that, at his best, he is one of the great novelists of the twentieth century. I go back to his work again and again, with pleasure and sorrow and awe.

This week is flying by: suddenly it's Friday, and I'm wondering how I got here. I'll be glad to have a weekend at home, though I expect I'll be working through some of it, as I stupidly agreed to add even more burdens to my load--a judging gig that has to be completed by the end of the month. But so far, so good with the new editing project; so far, so good with my classes. I'm churning forward.

Last night I went out to write, always a good evening. Writing with that community makes me feel brighter, cleaner, like I've been to church, like I've received an ineffable something that will hold me in grace for the coming week. How can that happen via a scatty potluck dinner, some chatter, and a few open-ended writing prompts? I have no idea, but it does.

So today, with that gift in my pocket, I'll get onto my mat, I'll get back to my desk, I'll pound out a few hours of editing work, I'll fidget with a poem draft. In the afternoon Teresa and I will talk about Southey and Cowper, I'll start judging writing samples, I'll mull over upcoming classes, I'll bread parmesan lamb chops for dinner, I'll dig into the McMurtry novel I've started rereading. So many words; so many sentences. Isn' t this a crazy literary life I lead?

Yes, I know: these January days are a quickstep into the spiral of Trump. So what's your resistance? Mine is to swim in every wonderful thing he knows nothing about. I read books! I go for long walks! I hug my cat! I kiss my beloved! Take that you, asshole. Bet you wish you were me.

As most of you know, in 2023, after more than a decade at the helm of the Frost Place teaching programs, I stepped away from that position and made the decision to reimagine my teaching in new places and new ways. Monson Arts, where I had already been working with high school writers, had offered me a home for a different kind of conference, one that was certainly linked to the work I'd been doing at the Frost Place but that was not solely aimed at classroom teachers or strictly bound to the legacy of Robert Frost, one that gave me opportunities to create cross-disciplinary links and rethink how faculty and participants might interact and shine in the lush surroundings of an artists' residency center.

To my joy, amazement, and relief, last year's conference was a total success--both financially and program-wise. The staff at Monson Arts took magnificent care of us, and we had a full slate of participants, some of them Frost Place alums, some completely new to the venture. The enthusiasm and confidence of participants, faculty, and staff was humbling, in the best possible way for me. It reminded me that even my small efforts can cast a few ripples into a bigger pond . . . so I'd better do my work in this world as hard as I can.

Sometimes that means change. Immediately after last year's session, my associate director, Teresa Carson, and I began to talk about how we might revise the conference to create new openings and opportunities for exploration, collaboration, and community. One change is that we will now weave what was an optional add-on Writing Intensive fully into the week's program, with Teresa as the guiding spirit behind those linked activities. Another change is that we are bringing in guest faculty who specialize in arts beyond poetry, who use poems as a springboard and an inspiration for other kinds of creation.

This year our guest faculty will be Gwyneth Jones, currently a dance professor at Bowdoin College, with a long professional career in New York, London, and elsewhere; and Gretchen Berg, a poet who works in physical theater, often with very young children, and has been a member of numerous dance, theater, and mime companies.

Registration is now open for the 2025 Conference on Poetry and Learning at Monson Arts. Please note that there are numerous housing/meal options available to you. If you prefer not to stay on campus, maybe so you can bring along family or dogs, there are lots of nearby cabin options. And if you prefer to handle your own meals, the houses on campus do have full kitchens. Chantal Harris, the executive director at Monson Arts, can help you work all of that out, so contact her directly. If you are interested in applying for a scholarship, please let me know, and I will add your name to my list.

Also, this year we are strictly limiting our numbers to 15 participants, so you might want to apply early to hold that space.

And if you would like to support our scholarship fund, we would be so grateful. All donations will go directly to supporting participants who would otherwise not be able to afford to attend.

This apartment at Monson Arts in is on the luxe side: king-sized beds, and G and I each get our own bathroom. So I read in the tub for a while, then slept well on my giant mattress, with dreams of my grandfather's farm, and soon I'll wander downstairs to the general store for coffee and yogurt.

I haven't seen my students since mid-December, and I hope they'll be able to settle back into their work, I hope I'll  be able to settle back into my work, I hope the work will be able to settle back into us . . . all of its wondering, wandering surprises and concentrations and patterns and upsets and strange discontinuities.

Yesterday was catch-up-between-roadtrips day, which means that today is embark-on-the-next-roadtrip day and also start-a-new-editing-project day and try-to-squeeze-in-a-long-walk-among-the-chores day, but at least it is not wash-dry-fold-five-loads-of-laundry day anymore.

Actually this trip north will be more fun than usual because my friend Gretchen is coming along to hang out with the kids, see what we're up to, mess around with some drafts and revisions with us. So it should be an enjoyable outing, even if I'm not full of enthusiasm about traveling again so soon.

My mind is feeling a bit scattered. I haven't settled myself down to anything beyond housework yet: the glitter of our New York City weekend is still distracting me. But I suppose employment will tame me again. It's been a couple of months since I've had a steady editing gig, a month since I've been in the high school classroom . . . It sure is easy to not hold down a job.

The bus made good time, and we landed in the little northern city by the sea 45 minutes earlier than scheduled--a miracle on the New York route, which is almost always snarled in traffic. Our neighbor sweetly fetched us home, and the cat howled his relief at our return, stomping around in delight as he watched me light a fire and get out the cribbage board and thus prove that we had no intention of leaving him alone again.

And so here we are at Monday again. Shortly T will trudge off to work, and I will battle with laundry and house stuff and groceries as I ready myself for tomorrow's trip north and the restart of my high school year.

It snowed while we were gone--just a couple of inches, but enough to change the quality of light, add a glimmer of pale below the darkness. Home feels restful, even spacious, after a few days in the crowded Brooklyn apartment, and its familiar sounds and smells are comforting. Our visit was so lovely, so cathartic, in so many ways. But I am ready to be home, and sorry that I have to leave again so soon.

Well, such is the working life. At least I have all of today to get myself and my air space in order.

I will read Southey and Cowper, I will work on poem drafts, I will wash floors and wash clothes, I will restock the cupboards, I will go for a walk, I will answer emails, I will make dinner, I will water houseplants, I will smile at Tom, I will think wistfully of our children, I will squeeze the cat, and all of this everyday clutter is being alive, and I am trying to pay attention to that, trying to remember that now is all that I can count on, and so I am counting on it as hard as I can.

Yesterday was a work day--a class on poetic research that, at least for me, was really fun. Meanwhile, T and the kids hung out, all descending on me later in the afternoon before everyone split up for the evening. T had made reservations for the two of us at a Japanese restaurant with a sushi tasting menu, which gave us a chance to take a long walk on either end of our meal. And then we fell asleep pretty quickly, no doubt a side effect of my insomniac night before.

This morning we'll meet the kids for a diner breakfast and then make our way back into Manhattan to catch our bus. It's been a tremendous weekend--so good on so many levels--but it's time to find my way back into my familiar days. I'll head to Monson on Tuesday, then start a new editing project, begin the next round of class planning, try to sort myself into the demands of winter, of work, of my own thoughts.

A quick good-morning, as I'm juggling time. I struggled to fall asleep last night but did manage to steal a few hours around daybreak, and now I need to focus on getting ready for class. I'm not sure why I was so wakeful, but likely Ray's ghost had something to do with it.

We did have a lovely, lovely day yesterday: breakfast and the Cloisters with the kids, then a beautiful dinner out with T's parents, a sentimental visit with the kids to Ray's bar where I drank nothing but water, a hand-in-hand walk home with my dear one. It's been wonderful to be here with our young people, with our parents, with each other. But also I've been so emotional, which accounts, I guess, for the sleeplessness.

Anyway: gears switched. I'm going to work.

As is usual in Brooklyn, I stayed up late and slept late, and now here I sit in this familiar, crowded, overwhelming, vastly untidy apartment, waiting for the kettle come to a boil, listening to 4th Avenue rush-hour traffic, which from down a side street and through closed windows, sounds vaguely like ocean waves.

Last night's show was wonderful. The play was good, the direction was good, the actors were good, and the crowd was happy . . . there is nothing like watching your kid hit it out of the park, and he did. We tramped in with our big family contingent, including Stephen and his niece Molly, and Jeannie and Bob were there too, and Margo, and then Paul's friends, and Nick's friends . . . a fat circle of affection. The evening was a community celebration, and such a deep pleasure to me to watch this outpouring.

So now here we are at the next day. Tom and I will meet up with the kids for breakfast, and then I think we're going up to the Cloisters, a place that most of us love but where a couple of us have never been. Tom's parents prefer a quiet day, so we'll meet them tonight for dinner. It is a family vacation; it is Tom's birthday and Hannah's birthday; it is a celebration for Paul. I'm so glad I managed to pull this thing off.

Greetings from the rockin-n-rollin Concord Coach Lines bus. Typing is quite difficult with this bumpiness so expect some exciting spellings. The bus is mostly empty this morning. Dawn (not me, the other one) is streaking the sky a gorgeous lemon yellow, but none of that glow has as of yet reached the bus, where it is still nighttime. T and I are in high spirits, which pleases and surprises us both (or at least me; maybe he is not surprised). Given the hallucinatory misery of our last trip to the city, I expected a certain PTSD gloom, but we are not in fact gloomy, though we wish were less bumpy. It was a good choice to pop some Dramamine. By my feet is a bag of breakfast: two bagel sandwiches from the Jewish deli. In my backpack is a fat paperback of Robertson Davies's Salterton trilogy--plenty of book to last me the entire trip. I'm going to stop writing this letter now because typing is too hard. Talk to you tomorrow.

Still cold and windy out there--maybe not the best day to get all of my hair cut off, but nonetheless that's what I did yesterday, and now I jump every time I catch sight of myself in a mirror: who is this person smiling back at me? Not only is my hair really short, but most of the gray, which was in the heavy front locks, has vanished and the brown original has resurfaced from the depths . . . a strange and unnerving time-traveling result. Anyway: it's the new me, at least for a few weeks, and tomorrow I'm taking her to New York.

As expected, a new editing project has dropped into my lap, one more match igniting my hair-on-fire January. But I won't start digging in till next week, and I'm trying not to think any more about next week until it gets here. This coming weekend requires all of my attention. Today I've got to pack up my clothes, my work materials, the gifts I'm bringing; I've got to deal with cat-sitting stuff and trash-pickup stuff and figure out who we're meeting where and when . . . There will be nine of us converging on Manhattan tomorrow night, plus various in-town friends who are also coming to the show. I feel like a circus ringmaster. One with surprisingly short and very brown hair.

Another 10-degree morning, with the furnace grinding away and the cat streaking back into the house after a mere 60 seconds on the stoop. Even my laptop keys are cold.

But as you know, I like weather. Yesterday A and I trudged down by the windy water, then wrestled our way through the cold to do a bit of shopping and eat lunch. It was fun, breasting the breeze, our hands shoved into our pockets, our hats pulled down low, and of course talking talking talking, which is what we always do. I think we've never been quiet together, not for thirty years.

With the inauguration looming, I've been desperate to embrace these long friendships, a sharp wind, a handful of notes, a bluejay. What is the opposite of Trump? Almost everything beautiful in the world.

I've just finished rereading Daniel Mason's North Woods, and now I've started rereading Robertson Davies's Salterton trilogy, mostly because I thought it would last me well over two long bus rides. But I'd forgotten how sharp Davies can be--for instance, "Nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library."

The run of a good library = the opposite of Trump. Laughing into a cold wind = the opposite of Trump. Playing a noisy card game = the opposite of Trump. Curling up in bed with a warm beloved = the opposite of Trump. The resistance starts at home.

It's 10 degrees out there this morning: genuine Maine cold in a winter that hasn't had much of it. And it's Monday again, and a short week again as we're heading south on Thursday for a few days of party. Today I'll finish up some housework, and then a friend from the homeland is planning to drop by and we'll go into town and do some shopping and walking together. I've got two birthdays to celebrate on Friday--T's 60th and my future daughter-in-law's 29th; and of course NYC is its own celebration and we will be going out for a big family meal in Brooklyn that night, but still I want to search out a little token for both of them.

Maybe this afternoon I'll get a chance to work on my Monson planning. If not, that's tomorrow's job, sandwiched between a visit with another friend and a desperately needed haircut. It's going to be a peculiar week: clattery and people-oriented, dotted with obligations and and chatter, and all of my work hours popping up at weird times.

Anyway, I slept okay last night, so that's a plus. The laundry is under control, and the houseplants are watered. I've got enough leftovers and vegetables to pull together something interesting for tonight's dinner--maybe along the lines of sheet-pan wild rice with chicken and eggs and roasted tomatoes. I'll get on my mat this morning, and I'll get the vacuuming and mopping done, and I'll try to organize a few NY details, and then A will arrive and I can relax into dear familiar homeland talk.

I feel like my mind is scrambling in a thousand directions at once, but such is life this week. The big family trip was entirely my idea, so I have to hold up everyone's end. Yet Ray won't be there to greet us . . . and he had been so happy about the prospect of this visit: celebrating P's play, the Chicago kids flying in, T's parents there as well . . . a big family embrace and he'd planned to be smack in the middle of it. But alas.

The little northern city by the sea is settling into cold January, yet the ground is bare. We've only had a single shovel-worthy snowstorm this season, and that one was barely worth shoveling. I hate seeing the bare-dirt garden: snow is such a good insulator, and all of this freezing and thawing can't be good for roots. Still, the lack of snow has meant easy walking--no ice or slush to contend with as I stride into in the wind. And there's been so much wind: every day is another bluster.

Yesterday was pretty quiet: a slow start on the couch; then reading and writing and catching up on work stuff; then a fast walk in the wind before I made noodle bowls for dinner. Today I'll wash sheets and towels, clean bathrooms, water plants, maybe glance at the Bills game.

In between pecking away at a poem draft, I forced myself to send out a couple of submissions, query a couple of non-responders, fill out a grant application, update my publisher on publicity stuff, etc. After I get back from NY I've got a spate of readings and events ahead of me, including a TV interview that I have been trying to ostrichize under the trashcans in the back alleys of my brain but is in truth making me quite nervous. I've also got a convention presentation to prepare for in March, an on-stage conversation to prepare for in April, a weekend zoom class to teach in February, plus I'll be back on the Monson treadmill and probably facing a new stack of editing. And I can't forget the the teaching conference in July.

Oy.

Well, anyway, first things first. Teresa and I are all set for next Saturday's zoom class, the NY trip will be delightful/heartbreaking, I've got a sociable week ahead of me, even before I leave for the city, and what I need to do in my "spare" hours is concentrate on the following week's high school planning and assume I'll figure out everything else eventually.

But for the moment it's Sunday morning, still early, still dark. I am the only body awake and a poem is bubbling in my thoughts. 

***

On another note: BID, the play that my son Paul is directing, opens on Tuesday at the Tank, 312 W. 36th Street in Manhattan. Shows run from January 7 through January 12. Both the director and the playwright, Nick Hennessy, are graduates of Bennington College. Nick is currently a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. Paul has been a props artisan and stagehand in a number of Off-Broadway productions and works in the props department at the Manhattan School of Music.

During yesterday's conversation with Jeannie and Teresa, we found ourselves revealing that all of us have long had the same daydream: that our favorite writers are proud of us . . . ghost Dickens sits in a corner smiling at me, as Ovid smiles at Teresa, as Dickinson smiles at Jeannie. Oddly, all of us nurtured this dream even before we were writers: when we were teenagers or younger, reading books like drunks, not really writing yet but nonetheless solemnly convinced that great writers were the pinnacle of human glory.

It brings tears to my eyes, to picture these girls that we were, worshipping so fervently at the altar, and so alone in our devotions. Even then I knew from books that other people felt this way--that was the lesson of Jo in Little Women, soother of so many bookish, awkward teenage girls--but I didn't know anyone else my age who was passionate about books until I went to college. And even there the others weren't like me. The bookish all seemed to want to study. But what I wanted to do was read.

All my life I have held on to this lonesome, wistful, obstinate, childish connection to my books. Among the people who declare "I rarely reread anything," or "I don't have time to read," or "I read to relax," or "I read for information"--all perfectly acceptable approaches to reading; all reasonable; I am not judging any of you--I waft like dandelion fluff. I am not serious. I am too serious. I am tongue-tied. I can't stop trying to explain.

And yet, over time, a few of us flit together.

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.