The line "I wake to sleep and take my waking slow" has been slithering into my head at random moments for a few weeks now. I couldn't remember where the line originally came from--Emily Dickinson? William Carlos Williams? I finally looked it up today and found that it is from the poem "Waking" by Theodore Roetke. I'm not sure why it has lodged itself in my brain, why it continues to surface over and over again. Maybe it's because I wish I could take my waking slow rather than having to pop up with the alarm each morning to get the kids ready for school.

Strange how certain words and phrases cycle through our heads. When my sister-in-law Heather was in labor with her son, the word "Cochise" kept hissing in her ear. Funny pairs of words have been popping into my daughter's head lately--renegade salesman, octavious cocktail, outlandish butler. It's like her brain is an automatic band-name generator. Where do these words come from? What are they trying to tell us? I suppose I'm glad I don't understand the phenomenon--I like the mystery of it. If I have to be haunted by something, it might as well be words.