I'm hitting the road early today so will talk tomorrow. Stay tuned for cat drama. Oy. 

Another cold gray day on the docket, and then three days of rain to follow . . . and naturally they are timed exactly for when I'm supposed to be driving back and forth to Vermont. Sigh.

Well, we'll see what transpires. It's possible my family would rather I didn't come when the weather's bad, but for now I'm assuming I'll be on the road tomorrow. So today will be housework day, and it ought to be weeding day as well, but the conditions have been poor for garden work. I did get the grass mowed yesterday, so that's one thing to cross off the list. But the laundry never dried, and the air was a refrigerator, and everyone I saw on my walk had their coats zipped up tight, except for teenagers.

Given the weather this week as well as my incipient travel plans, I've been more or less nailed to my editing desk, though I've been working on conference plans around the edges. I ought to be designing some more Poetry Kitchen classes, but right now all of my teaching energies are focused on the conference, and I can't seem to dredge up the get-up-n-go for a whole new round of invention. I think in some ways I haven't quite recovered from my glum period. Also, when I look back at this winter I think, Jeez. No wonder. Ray died. The United States took an axe to the head. I was sick enough to go to the emergency room. Also I worked really, really hard through all of it. I need to cut myself some slack. Those new Poetry Kitchen classes will appear eventually.

On the mantle is a fresh bouquet of half-opened chive flowers and budded-up salvia and yarrow. Outside lilacs are blooming, and the white azalea glows in the half-light. Bluebells and woodruff sweeten the shade.

I know I've got to tug on my boots and make myself drive to Vermont tomorrow. I know have to grind out a few more hours at my desk, and then scrub toilets and drag the vacuum cleaner around the house. Before enlightenment: chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood and carry water. Always the same old story.

But I will go for my walk this morning. I will breathe in the fragile, fleeting scent of crabapple blossoms. I will watch baby squirrels wrestle and chase in my backyard. I will keep reading this incredible Colson Whitehead novel I snagged at a yard sale on Sunday. One of these days that old sun will decide to show his face again. I look forward to seeing him.

The weather's suddenly gotten so cold again. Yesterday was raw and blustery; and even I, dedicated outdoorser, couldn't find the gumption to weed or mow in a damp wind. Then, of course, the rains erupted and I just barely snatched the laundry off the line in time. Last night I lit a fire in the stove, and this morning the furnace has kicked on. It's hard to believe that, calendar-wise, we're on the cusp of summer. The view looks like mid-May but the air feels like the first of April. We've had maybe four balmy days over the past two months. And yet everything is growing beautifully. Clearly spring knows what it's doing, so I will not complain.

Instead of working outside, I spent most of the day at my desk, plunging through a fat stack of editing, though I did take time out for a coffee party to talk with faculty about their conference plans. Today I'll be back at my desk, but maybe this time I'll also talk myself into doing some afternoon yardwork in the cold.

I've been reading Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle and very much enjoying it, though I ought to get back to my Shelley assignment instead of wallowing in novels, as is my wont. I enjoyed the recent New Yorker article about the New York Mets, and then last night enjoyed listening to Mets radio as the Red Sox beat them. (The Mets are my second-favorite team, and I could also be talked into rooting for the Tigers in the postseason. I fear that the Red Sox will not be an option in that regard.)

I do wish I could sleep better. Even when I've managed to doze off, I've been beset by peculiar linked dreams centering around various central Maine women of my acquaintance who've always made me feel nervous and awkward. Plus, I lost my glasses in a car that might have been a DeLorean.

Well, so it goes . . . dream life and waking life are both imperfect, but at least in the awake version I've got my glasses on.

Yesterday was the neighborhood's annual yard-sale extravaganza, and Tom loves yard sales, so we spent most of the morning trudging from one to the next. We ended the morning with takeout bagels and lox, which we ate in a small park under falling apple blossoms. And then in the afternoon we accomplished two yard chores that I've been longing to get done: repairing our water-damaged outside table and repairing the leaking birdbath.

You may recall that I rescued that birdbath last summer from the side of the road. It's always had a slow leak, but this year the leak increased so that it hasn't been holding water at all--a great disappointment for the local mockingbird, who keeps trying to bathe in it. So Tom mixed up some cement and patched the cracks, and I undertook the table repairs. Though I'd tarped the metal table over the winter, water had gotten in under the covering and damaged the finish. So, under Tom's tutelage, I scraped paint, sanded off the rust, and then spray-painted on a new coat, and now the table looks better than ever. I'm quite pleased with myself.

Thus, we had a busy outdoor day together, and in the evening, as the rains came on, we sagged companionably on the couch with the windows still open, and, you know, I just really like hanging out with that guy, even when we're half asleep.

***

And now Monday again. This will be a busy week for me as I have tons of editing to do, plus I've got to drive to Vermont on Thursday to see my family. In the meantime: an update about the Conference on Poetry and Learning at Monson Arts. I've got just one opening left; so if you or anyone you know might be interested, please reach out to me ASAP.

Most of you have been reading this blog for a long time, so you know the history of the conference. Its first iteration, the Conference on Poetry and Teaching, was founded by former Maine poet laureate Baron Wormser, who led it for a decade at the Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire, before handing it off to me. I then directed it at the Frost Place for another decade before moving to Monson Arts last summer.

While I'll always miss the Frost Place, the move to Maine has been so good in so many ways. Instead of strictly running a teaching conference, I've been able to morph it into a conference for poets and teachers and to broaden the scope beyond poetry into collaborative interactions with other artistic disciplines. Also,  Monson Arts is a wonderful setting--a gorgeous lakeside campus, excellent facilities, top-notch food, and an extremely supportive and capable staff and administration.

Conference registration is strictly limited to 15 participants so that we can keep the sessions intimate and intense. This year my dear friend Gretchen Berg, a poet and physical theater specialist, and her partner, the dancer Gwyneth Jones, are serving as faculty. We've got participants coming from Texas, Florida, and New Jersey, as well as throughout New England. Many of these participants are top-notch poets in their own right.

If you are at all interested in close collegial work with teaching artists and serious poets, in exploring alternative approaches to revision in your own work and/or with students at all levels, and developing a larger network of friendship, I hope you will consider it. This conference is a labor of love for me, in a deep and essential way. I want to create the kind of place I never had when I was young. I want to open a space for community in all of its emotional and intellectual richness.

And if you can't attend yourself but have the ability to support another participant, please consider donating scholarship funds. I've got several interested educators who don't have any school funding, and my own sources have run dry. It would be wonderful to be able to bring one of them to Monson.

In July 2017, when we first laid eyes on this house, we knew instantly that it had a lot of problems, inside and out. But the asking price was relatively low, and we had skills. Tom thought he could deal with the inside issues, and I thought I could deal with the outside issues, so we took the plunge.

Most of the yards in this neighborhood are tiny, but this one was comparatively large, with a south-facing front and a shady back. But it was in dreadful condition, especially the backyard, which was a barren waste littered with dog droppings. Yesterday I went back to look at the real estate photos, and they were just as hideous as I remembered--bare dirt, weedy tufts, trash strewn along the fence line. It was an eyesore.

When I was outside in the drizzle yesterday, tucking transplanted bits of sweet woodruff, Japanese grass, and miniature iris among the maple roots before the heavier rains rolled in, I thought about the ugly yard I'd first seen eight years ago. There's stil so much to do on this place, inside and out, and of course the plantings aren't close to maturity yet. Yet instead of a grim wasteland, there's the promise of arbor. Pale woodruff blossoms shimmer against the grass. Viburnum and smoke bush and Japanese maple unfurl their tender leaves. A clematis climbs a trellis. Chairs gather. A clothesline drips with rain.

Once this place was charmless. Now it has a quirky, homemade, unfinished beauty. It is enthusiastic and imperfect, and it looks exactly like something made by me.

Another foggy morning, but the air is much cooler than it was yesterday. Clearly showers are on the way, and just in time: the gardens get thirsty so quickly. Between work and a zoom meeting I managed to mow grass--for the third time this week. In the damp weather it's been growing at fairy-tale speed, and the reel mower can barely hack through it. But at least it's a semblance of a lawn now. Then before dinner I thinned the new greens sprouting in the garden boxes, and we had our first homegrown salad of the season--miniature arugula and spinach tossed with violet leaves and blossoms . . . only a handful for each but so tender and fresh.

I'm ready enough for a showery weekend. Of course I always have a hard time staying inside, so I'm sure I'll be out in the mist, transplanting a little, weeding a little, walking in the rain. But the big jobs are done--grass managed, seeds sowed, mulch hauled--and I can putter and dream.

Yesterday's zoom confab with Teresa and Jeannie was particularly rich. We'd each brought in a draft we'd been working on; and as Teresa said, each poem was so extremely characteristic of its poet. Jeannie wrote about divination; Teresa wrote about Jersey City; I wrote about a brook. The poems were our mirrors.

The way the three of us talk about poems: I can hardly describe how it happens, because I don't understand how it happens. But we never workshop, we never boss. No "Fix this sentence" or "That line doesn't work." We just get excited about the poems and suddenly, as the two of them talk, a clarity comes over me . . . "what if?" . . . "I wonder" . . . "oh, oh, oh!"  Their conversation makes magic.

So this morning my thoughts are hugging my brook poem--stroking its stanzas and line breaks, tenderly tracing its surges and repetitions. I will make changes, I will keep re-seeing, but I love it so much more than I did yesterday morning. Now it is like a beloved small son, rubbing his eyes as he wakes up from a long sleep.

Those are the kind of poet friends I have. They offer me my own work as a gift.

The fog was creeping in from the bay as my friends and I drove home from our poetry evening, and this morning the neighborhood is shrouded in mist--maples, houses, lilacs, cars, and also my two lines of very damp laundry, which got caught in a rogue shower yesterday afternoon and are now drenched in cloud.

It's Friday, and I'm looking forward to spending the entire weekend with Tom. We had thought of going for another canoe jaunt, but the weather doesn't look promising. So I don't know what will transpire instead. I'm just happy I won't be away from him.

In the meantime, there's today.  I'll drag the recycling to the curb, I'll go for a walk, I'll wash the sheets, I'll work on my editing job, and later this afternoon Jeannie, Teresa, and I will talk about poem drafts and what we're reading and thinking about, and it will be a good ending to a wistful week.

Wistful, shrouded, cloud . . . rogue, caught, drenched. The words fill with air, they tug at their sentences, their frail strings snap and away they float, bobbing against fences, bumbling into branches and power lines, then suddenly reaching open sky, eddying into wind, riding the current, taking on speed, and with a swirl they vanish.