Only time for a quick note this morning. Below freezing when I woke, but sun blazing down now on the frost-thick lawn.

From A Book of the Winter:

The Courts with feather litter of the cold are filled
And the dead woods hear no hunting horn.

Sacheverell Sitwell, Doctor Donne and Gargantua..

I stand in the staff car park waiting for a lift as sleet begins to fall through the yellow lights. I reflect I’m more Sisyphus than Odysseus. Thirty years as a nurse, thirty years I can look back on, having done no harm, having kept these groups of vulnerable people safe. Two years to go and then retirement. I’m formulating phrases for my next appraisal; I’ll try: “I’m struggling with the pace of change...” What I mean is I have to spend too much time sitting at a computer logging notes, care...

For a moment the moon is a gold coin above the feathery tips of the conifers, then a grey smear spreads over the sky and it ghosts away. I check the thermometer outside and it’s just a degree above freezing. The stone birdbath is solid ice; I boil water to free it and clean it. A holly leaf pricks my thumb as I pull it out of the ice and litter. I fill it with fresh water. If it freezes again tonight I’ll remove it in the morning to set its disc of ice in the dark hawthorn hedge like a window....

Trees radiant in the low light, oak and beech. Dark stone walls against green upswept fells. In a flash we pass a road sign that points down a lane that says “Briggflatts”. I sit in the car wondering.

We arrive in Sedbergh. Westwood Books is a great barn of a bookshop full of treasures. I get nice collections by Chesterton and Belloc but the real prize is an anthology called “A Book of the Winter” compiled by Edith Sitwell. It’s a first edition published by Macmillan in 1950....

Congratulations to all those whose work is scheduled to appear in the inaugural print edition of Able Muse. It will include a handful of you who heeded the call for submissions here on the Sphere, Facebook and elsewhere.

I'm hoping for a release later this month or at the latest, earlier part of next month. Well, you'll know when your contributor copy does arrive. And here's where I encourage everyone to subscribe to our print edition at the Able Muse Press website - http://www.ablemusepress.com/...