A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.

Making something is often a way of keeping yourself company. The work does not begin as a message to an audience; it begins as a sound you make in a room where nobody is listening, because the making is bearable in a way the silence is not. That other people eventually hear it is a second thing.

If you are in a quiet stretch, let whatever you make be for the quiet rather than for anyone’s response. Write the page, play the thing, cook the good meal for one. Judge it by whether the evening went better with it than without.