The figure in the carpet eludes my eyes, trained and dulled by the daily routine. My upper back and shoulders are tight from too much heavy bag work, or maybe not enough. The day suspended in mists. I’m glad to be summer teaching, glad to feel minimally useful, though in the present parlance far from essential. Poetry is non-essential too: I read Joseph Brodsky for his sensuous genius in the face of the life-denying extremes of our once and future austerity. The beloved waits: “What matters is not what life has, / but just one's faith in what should be there.”