Yesterday was all poetry, all the time. I began my morning with a notebook and three collections: Betsy Sholl's As If a Song Could Save You, Diane Seuss's Modern Poetry, and Coleridge and Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads. I'm reading Seuss for conversations with Teresa and Jeannie, C&W for conversations with Teresa, and Sholl for conversations with the poet; and mid-morning the poet herself dropped by, so we drank coffee and started to figure out how we might approach our upcoming public conversation about each other's work . . . and also ended up talking about Seuss and C&W and many other things. These poetry days are my daydream days, miracles come true, those childhood imaginings of what it might feel like to live in a world where people actually write and read and talk about books with deep purpose, humility, and delight.

And then in the evening I went out to write with my poetry group, and now this morning a messy but lively draft bubbles in my notebook, a project to look forward to after I get home from the vet.

I know the sentences in this letter are baggy, but that seems to be the sound in my head this morning. Maybe my mind is too full of surprises; maybe my language will lighten as the sun comes up.

Forgive me. Sometimes poems make me inarticulate.