“Entering a good poem, a person feels, tastes, hears, thinks, and sees in altered ways. Why ask art into a life at all, if not to be transformed and enlarged by its presence and mysterious means?”
― Jane Hirshfield, Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World

It is January, and Frank is not upset about us being here this winter, instead of visiting a warmer climate, and neither am I. It’s cold, not too cold, and dry, and ice is fringing the river. I feel I could even safely kayak, but I have not ventured out. I am happy in the woods and wetlands and brook, especially when there are ice pictures for me to look at, as there were this morning. The planet earth, a globe, hung in the ice by the morning brook, as if, an observer from another planet, was viewing it from afar. Wondering about the life there. Wondering what it might be like to visit, or live there: Earth. I kept walking in winter feeling grateful for gravity, being held here, home. And I worked on some poems I’ve been sending out. Saw clearly some issues, and revised. There was a lot of comings and goings and distractions at home, pleasant ones, My youngest came by with a knot in her shoulder I had to work out. Frank and I ran into the market in the afternoon. Like a date, a trip in the car, a few grocery items, and a chance to talk, chewing through some ideas and plans. A rare outing! I roasted a butternut squash and made a new recipe for dinner, and I think my daughter and I enjoyed it much more than Frank, but he said he liked it, which was nice. A butternut squash and spinach lasagne. It’s very likely he preferred the carrot cake we picked up for dessert. Here is the recipe.