A slight sleep in, a time to take it slow as I want. Day off from swim, but not from a walk in the wet woods with Charlie, at our own pace. Stop on the trestle bridge to watch a green leaf carried by current. You think you stop to watch something, and but it’s something else you get to see: the beaver. A ripple of water upstream. He’s crossing bank to bank. I watch him and I think about surface and depth. What can be seen and known and all that’s underneath that comes up or does not. I dreamed last night and didn’t think I’d write it down. But I do, anyway, and I’m glad that I’m disciplining myself to do this because, like writing, the dream that just stays in my thoughts doesn’t give what it can give when I write it down. That’s when the insight comes. It was a dream about poetry. I listened, or listened again, to a long lecture on The Dolphin’s Turn by Peter Sacks––on the symbol of the dolphin in poetry. I’m writing a poem in which there is a turn, and a dolphin. This poem I’ve worked on for years. It has been a poem and prose and a poem and prose. And when I returned from my walk, after a birthday lunch out with our son, I worked on this piece and it went from prose to poem again. And I like it, even though I don’t know if it’s working. It’s working for me. Time for workshop and feedback. So sweet to get the time with our son and a long chat. Then dinner with my daughter and her boyfriend. A busy day. A day of memory. Giving birth. First born. All the years and years ago before I knew anything about being a mother. Frank and I had a couple of long talks today, and I feel appreciative of these December days, of being indoors more and near each other and best friends still after raising these three.