I’m Tracy Plath, poet and grandma, and more than happy to be in a good head space to write once more. During the marathon last year I and my family were in the midst of a move across the States from Texas to Indiana. Previously, I was able to complete three full marathons, an experience that brought me new friends, better writing, and the opportunity to publish several books and edit several more for my new community of writer friends. The experience has enriched my life on so many levels I can’t imagine what my life would have been without the marathon. I posted all twelve poems of last year’s half marathon from a hotel room in El Paso overnight after a day of intense packing. The torture was only compounded by slow and spotty hotel wifi, but I managed to finish after producing better poetry than I had anticipated being able to do. Something about the time crunch of the marathon and the unseen but ever present support of hundreds of other poets helps me to create in ways I was unable to imagine before my first marathon in 2015. Our family made a week long, tortuously slow trip across country with our four generations of seven people a day and a half after that marathon ended. We made it with surprisingly little damage, and then spent nearly a year shuttling the family from one room to another in our little Indiana home as renovations were completed to make it a larger and more handicapped accessible space. We just finished on May 1 of this year, in the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic, and were grateful to just be able to curl into our new shell and settle into a somewhat unnerving peace and quiet after such ongoing chaos. Suffice it to say, I’m very much looking forward to writing once more, and meeting many more lovely poets from around the world!