I have a new baby! Leo Stephen was born on December 30, 2009 at 8:09 am, weighing 8 pounds, 1 ounce, and measuring 19 inches long. We’re in love with him!

I probably won’t be posting for a while, as I take some time off to enjoy our new baby, and to write. But I hope you all have a happy winter….

Recently, I was asked by The Rumpus what book I was reading on New Year’s Day. I was in the hospital on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, and I’d brought about six books to read (somehow, I’d imagined C-section recovery would be a good time for reading…HA. So much for that idea…) I did manage to read Mary Oliver’s Selected Poems, though, and here’s an excerpt from “The Summer Day.” I can’t think of anything better to read, to welcome a new year and a new life:

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?