It snowed yesterday--the sort of garbagy, slush-from-the-sky, late March clipper that depresses all hopes. Thank goodness for a wood stove: without a fire to soothe my eyes, I would have been dismal indeed. Now this morning a hard crust coats every tulip leaf, every lilac bud. I know the ice will melt away under sunlight, but for the moment winter is strutting around the ring while spring sobs in the corner with a black eye.

This afternoon I'll be driving north into the homeland, where winter really is still king. But despite the weather, the school year is rolling toward the finish line. I've only got three classes left with my high schoolers, and we need to get cracking on our final projects. The days have whipped by: I feel like I've barely gotten to know these kids, and now they're flying away from me. That is always the story of teaching.

So this morning I'll pull myself together for travel. Yesterday I finished my weekly house chores, edited a couple of chapters, went for a fast walk in the pre-storm chill. I read about Paris and pored over the paintings of Sargent. I drank many cups of ginger tea and baked a chicken potpie. Two weeks ago I drove north feeling like I'd been drained by a vampire. I may not be writing good poems at the moment, but at least I've got blood in my veins again.

I think, possibly, maybe, that I'm almost feeling like myself again. I had a busy, physical weekend, but I didn't take one single nap, and I got a lot more accomplished than I thought I would. I cleared leaves, ripped up the stones in my garden paths, made bread, scrubbed bathrooms. I hung around admiring Tom as he built two new garden boxes, which he'll install next weekend. We watched Cooper Flagg, our central Maine basketball star, propel Duke to the Sweet Sixteen. We ate a giant meal of lamb burgers, fried onions and peppers, homemade buns, potato salad, roasted green beans, and feta, followed by blueberry flan. I slept all night. And now it is Monday morning, and I do not feel like a damp rag.

I'll be on the road tomorrow and teaching in Monson on Wednesday, but today I'll be home--editing, finishing up my weekly housework chores, catching up on reading projects, maybe transplanting shrubs, if the wind isn't too vicious.

I've been reading about the siege of Paris and the Paris Commune--not a heartening history at any time, certainly not in our current state of chaos. But I'm also realizing how many great artists found their metiers in the years surrounding these disasters--painters such as Sargent and Cassatt, for instance.

The work goes on. The work requires us.

 "Our life really is a haunted one. The simplest thing in it is a mystery, the invisible world always lies round us like a shadow."

                                                                               --Harriet Beecher Stowe

**

For the first time this season, I spent most of my day in the yard--clearing leaves, bagging sticks, pruning shrubs, transplanting spinach. Tom was outside, too, beginning work on the new garden boxes he's building from scavenged boards. This means disruption: I've got to pull up most of the slate paths I've laid so we can accommodate the new design. And then I'll have to buy a giant pile of fresh soil and toil for hours filling the vast new containers. But the end result will be both more beautiful and more utilitarian, so the fuss is worth it.

Every year I am amazed at how much work it takes to keep this tiny city plot in cultivation. How ever did we manage 40 acres, two babies, and a barnful of animals? "The simplest thing . . . is a mystery."

Thanks to a day spent crouching and stooping and lifting, I am embracing the satisfactory ache of my gardening muscles this morning. It's funny: I am active all winter--working on my mat, trudging through the neighborhood--but gardening requires a particular combination of leg and back and arm and shoulder muscles that my winter upkeep regimen doesn't seem to touch. Gardening isn't just puttering among the flowers; it's real physical work . . . lugging rocks, digging holes, shoving wheelbarrows. But I am always glad to feel my body rising to the challenge, especially this year, after having been sick for so long.

Today will be cooler than yesterday, and will warm up more slowly. And I've got house and grocery chores to deal with as well, so I may not get much done outside. But I will start prying up the paths, and I might transplant a couple of elderberry shrubs. I cannot resist the carillon of spring.

Yesterday's convention presentation went well. We had maybe 50 teachers in our session, far more than I expected, and they seemed excited by the dictation/writing prompt/revision prompt strategies that Marita and I were offering. Now we'll see if that leads to any new signups for the Monson conference. I have hopes: some of the participants were pretty excited about what it felt like to play around with revision in this way.

But now it's Saturday, which means I can temporarily stop thinking about such matters. The weather will be cool but clear, and when the air warms up a bit I will get myself outside into the gardens and continue my leaf-removal tasks. I'll transplant spinach, and Tom and I will plan our new garden boxes, and in the kitchen a vat of chicken stock will simmer on the stove, and in the maples the cardinals will whistle and chortle, and I am looking forward to this day.

March has been relatively quiet for me, but April is shaping up to be crazy town. On April 5, I'll be reading at the South Portland Library. Then T and I will steal the following weekend to head to Mount Desert Island for our biannual cottage retreat. On April 19 I'll be teaching a Poetry Kitchen class. On April 25 I'll be going out to dinner with the poet Natalie Diaz (!). On April 26 I'll be taking a workshop with Diaz, listening to her read, and participating in an onstage conversation with Betsy Sholl about our work. And of course I'll be teaching in Monson and working on an editing project and mentoring a student book manuscript in the midst of all this. . . .

So a quiet weekend at home feels especially sweet. 

A steady rain is rattling down, one of those long slow all-day rains that gardens love. So no outside work today, maybe not even a walk. Instead, it will be a tuck-into-my-shell morning, mostly spent at my desk editing a snarl of legal footnotes. And then after lunch I'll doll myself up in a new dress and head downtown to the MCELA convention, where I'll be giving a presentation on revision, and hanging around the Monson Arts table hawking my programs, and otherwise behaving like a poet who is not curled under a turtle shell.

I've started reading a book I found on the street, David McCullough's The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, a study of nineteenth-century travels to the City of Light. I've never been to Paris myself (outside of the airport), but I've certainly read lots of Henry James, so I'm finding the book more interesting than I expected . . . poignant, too--the way in which Americans, in all our raw brashness, can be suddenly toppled by awe. Who knows if we will ever be that wide-eyed nation again?

There was a scattering of rain overnight: I see dampness glistening under the streetlights, hear roof drip ticking against the vents. The shower is surely lifting the spirits of the greening plants I've been releasing from last fall's matted leaves. I've still got much more to do in that regard, but there's no rush. A little rain, a little sun, a little more rain, a little more sun. My leaf chore is the least important task.

But it's been tonic to be outside, bending and stooping and lifting and carrying. It's been good to unfold my wintered-over muscles, to start living in my senses again. And I get such extreme pleasure from these early blooms: the crocuses, the snowdrops, so doughty and delicate, so tough and translucent.

The big new editing project did arrive yesterday, so today I'll be back to a regular desk schedule. I'll walk first, then slide myself into my work hours. I'll go out to write in the evening. I'll be a plain useful citizen  of the word.

Workwise, this has been a quieter week than I thought it would be, mostly because the new editing project that was supposed to arrive on Monday still hasn't made an appearance. I've filled the time with a smaller editing assignment and high school class planning, and yesterday I started two new poem drafts. I haven't written anything else in the weeks since I've started being sick, so that was a good sign: my brain is trying out a few dance steps again. Then, in the afternoon, I unearthed the wheelbarrow and began clearing leaves out of garden beds, another promising sign. Looks like maybe I won't be ill forever.

I expect the new editing project will arrive today, but till then I've got to make my own work. I'll mess with those poem drafts, read some Coleridge and Wordsworth, go for a walk. I'll clear leaves out of garden beds, hang laundry, roast a chicken. My connections to daily life still feel strangely air-brushed, but I'm drifting back into the blunt quotidian. I guess it's a good week to be underemployed. Still, I'd best be back to normal by Friday, when I've got to give a presentation in front of a pack of English teachers at the MCELA convention. Wish me luck.