It's always a relief when an insomnia cycle eases. I've been sleeping better for the past couple of nights, and the muscles I pulled in my lower back seem to be easing a bit as well, so I'm hoping to enjoy standing up and sitting down again too. I'll get onto my mat today and keep working at them. This aging stuff is annoying . . . an Alice sensation of running as fast as I can just to stay in one place. But so far I do keep running.

I got the bathrooms and floors cleaned yesterday, so now I get to devote the bulk of the rest of the week to desk work--the endless editing, prepping for Monson, my stack of reading obligations. In addition to The Pillow Book and Dream of Dreams, I've started rereading George Eliot's Adam Bede and John Fowles's The Maggot. And my new copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's verse novel Aurora Leigh arrived in the mail yesterday, which will be my next reading project with Teresa.

T is upstairs opening and closing drawers. Young Chuck purrs into my ear. Dark peers through the cold windowpanes. The poems wander like wraiths, wordless in the bare morning.