Back from the walk I bring in the mail and sit in my blue chair to read it: long letters from three old friends; five letters from acquaintances; eight brief notes about free-lancer business—a vita required for a poetry reading, an invitation to submit to a magazine, a request for a book review, a feeler about a bookstore appearance, a note from a publisher asking for a blurb; manuscripts from two strangers; proof of a poem for a magazine; two new poetry books; four magazines; and a box containing twenty copies of a remaindered book: my book: grump. I read the letters and tuck them beside my chair where I keep the dictator.

Then what do I do? This time of the day is lowest energy for me, not sleepy but slow-witted and lacking in drive or purpose. I look forward to tomorrow morning; I distribute a pile of books and magazines, tidying a little; I lie back in bed and pick up the book I went to sleep by, Studs Terkel as it happens, and read for half an hour. Rarely do I feel sleepy enough to take another nap. Maybe I invent an errand even if I don’t have one: I will arise and go now to the supermarket, or put gas in the car, or deposit a check at the bank. I read some more, not only Working but Robert Creeley’s Selected Poems or Harry Matthews’ Cigarettes or Meister Eckhart. Jane and I drink a cup of decaf. I read more manuscript for a friend; I read manuscript for a publisher, who will pay me a hundred and fifty dollars for reading three hundred pages and writing him a letter. Then, at four o’clock, energy comes back, energy and enterprise together. I sit at my desk again and draft eight hundred words of Life Work—about the best day—and put it on tomorrow’s tape for Lois.

Between five and six the Concord Monitor arrives and I sit in my blue chair reading a newspaper again. I look at magazines until dinner, which is Indian vegetarian ever since Jane and I returned from India last November. Jane cooks with imagination and resourcefulness, reconciling flavor with my diabetes. We go back and forth saying grace. Today is my turn and I say the couplet I made up: “Dear Lord, accept our gratitude / For this long day, and for our food.” I clear the supper table, rinse the dishes, and put them in the dishwasher, my heavy-duty housework for the day. I put the dog out. I dash down to Lois’s house and bring back the afternoon’s typing. (Clean copy of this morning’s work sits on my desk for tomorrow.) I bring tomorrow morning’s clean clothes to set them on top of the parlor Glenwood. When we lived without central heat I learned to dress and undress by the woodstove, and I still dress and undress there—although the Glenwood has been cold for eight years except when the oil company messes up. I fix the morning coffee, storing water in one place and frozen beans in another, pressing buttons to command the hour of grinding. I take out my upper partial and assemble tooth-cleaning apparatus beside my chair.