It's 42 degrees outside on this Saturday morning, and a new fire crackles in the wood stove. Our furnace problem has been fixed, but why waste oil when my basement is crammed with construction scraps? Tom has lugged home so much pine-board slag from work that I've barely needed to touch the actual firewood yet. Though pine is not ideal for real winter cold, at this time of year it's just right for taking the edge off the chill.

And the house will be open to the elements today because T will be ripping out the front door frame. If all goes well, by the end of the day we will have a brand-new, freshly painted, not-ugly weathertight door and storm door in place, with a solid sill beneath them. Of course this does mean that the Big Kitten will have to spend a few hours locked in the basement so he can't escape through the gaping maw, but I think he'll survive, though he will have his doubts.

Yesterday I went back to a writing project I think I mentioned to you a while ago--a linked story-in-poems, with each poem containing every word from one particular Sappho fragment. I wrote four new pieces and then went back through the draft as a whole to tweak language and story elements. The poems are set in the wartime 1940s, in an unnamed, semi-mythical, American provincial city. And because they are constrained by Sappho's word choice, the characters, too, are semi-mythical: a pair of working-class adult sisters caring for, and being controlled by, difficult parents who are enmeshed in the machinations of the Greek pantheon.

This has been very enjoyable project, not least because I've been able to come and go with it--work on it for a few days, let it lie for a few weeks--without losing the narrative or emotional threads . . . which isn't to say that I know where the tale is going. The story unrolls like a ball of yarn, and I am following the string. It's 17 pages long so far, almost chapbook length, and maybe that's what it will end up becoming. Or maybe it will be even longer. I'll let the story figure that out for itself.

Otherwise: today I'll plant garlic and tulip bulbs, start tearing out garden detritus, hang sheets on the outside lines. This will be my last weekend at home for a while, so I'll try to make the most of it.

Yesterday's jaunt to Bates turned out to be so pleasant. I spent an hour or so with a first-year class, whose assignment was to bring questions to class to ask me. Clearly, as good students, they tried to choose questions that would make their teacher happy. They were, on the whole, quite reminiscent of the kids I spent time with last month in Jersey City: career overachievers who had honed their ability to ace school. I recognize them: I went to Haverford, which is the same sort of college as Bates . . . though I personally had some serious gaps in my ability to ace school.

But at one moment yesterday, a change rippled the atmosphere. I'd been talking about a poem of mine that the class had been assigned to read: "Play Clothes," from Calendar. And I said casually, "I bet you all have a piece of clothing you remember loving to wear when you were young." Slowly, one student after another began piping up: the Sponge Bob shirt, the shirt with pink ladybugs . . . and then what they'd been doing while wearing these clothes . . . hugging a chinchilla, shooting their brother with a water pistol . . . It was poetry in action, that moment: these students suddenly saw that the detritus of life, our physical memory, holds intense emotion . . . saw that leading with things rather than abstractions is a way to tap into the depths.

It was a beautiful slippage.

Just a quick note this morning as I am heading out very early for my Bates College class. But for a moment I am paused here on the couch, listening to vague rain pattering against the dark windows. I hear Chuckie lapping up his breakfast; I hear the halting drip of the bathroom shower head and the cooling teakettle clicking on the kitchen stove. So many small sounds overlapping--a sort of aural fidget, a peaceable friction. And upstairs Tom sighing in his bed.

Today is my birthday, and I am celebrating with a cup of coffee and a daybreak fire in the wood stove. Outside it's 38 degrees, our coldest morning since last spring, and our new furnace is on the blink (sigh: probably a sensor issue but it should be under warranty and the guy is coming to repair it tomorrow), so starting a fire is simple common sense. Still, even in the woods, our stove always felt like such rich luxury. Yes, it was hard work to keep it stoked. Yes, it demanded constant attention. But sitting in a dark room watching golden flames lick at the maple logs, the soothing crackle and pop of pine kindling, stretching my hands out to the sweet warmth . . . that routine never gets stale.

So I'm 62 years old today--waking up in this little shabby house, in this little city by the sea, on this cold October morning. The day is mine, except for an evening zoom reading. My plan is to get onto my exercise mat, which I haven't done all summer; to go for a walk and return a library book; to deal with laundry and emails; and then read and write for the rest of the day. Nothing spectacular: just a bumble around alone in my own dear space.

Yesterday after work, I walked into find a sweet homemade card from Tom and Chuckie. Then, when T got home from work, he took me out to a a tiny Japanese restaurant where we sat at the bar and ate one exquisite mouthful of seafood after another. Tonight I'll make my own dinner, but that's pleasure too.

Every year my birthday reminds me of how much I love this world, despite all. The clean blue of an October sky. Wind gusting through dry leaves. The hop-skip of a silly black cat. The smile of friends who are glad to see me. Tom's knee pressed against mine. It's all so simple. It's all so tangled. I'm so glad to be here.

When I arrived in the homeland yesterday afternoon, a chill wind was whipping through the trees, spinning bright leaves into gusts and eddies. All night long it roared. I woke and slept and woke and slept, soothed by its oceanic growl. Living in the woods is living among the noise of trees, and for more than two decades this creak and swirl was my soundscape. Even today nothing comforts my ear like wind in a forest.

In a few minutes I'll get up, get dressed, get coffee and toast. I'll lug my overnight stuff out into the new morning and head north to Monson and a day's work. Today will be my first full day with this year's high school cohort, and our focus will be language. What are these words? Where do they bring us? How can we follow them?

 

Sunday continued our all-consuming house-centered weekend. While Tom was hammering off the final vestiges of the brick stoop and scraping out the rotten sill under the door, I was mowing grass and picking cherry tomatoes and hanging clothes on the line and kneading anadama bread and slicing fruit for a pear and cranberry pie. Now the house is sporting the ugly plywood band-aid it will wear till next weekend, and the pantry is stocked with food for packed lunches, and we are both pulling ourselves together for our long work weeks.

This afternoon I'll head north to the homeland and spend the night in Wellington, then teach in Monson tomorrow and tumble back to Portland afterward so that T can escort me out for a birthday celebration a day early. Dinner isn't possible on my actual birthday because I'm taking part in a zoom reading that evening--a one-year celebration of Baron's passing. (I'm unclear if this reading is open to an audience; if it is, I'll share the link soon.) Then, at the crack of dawn on Thursday, I'll drive to Lewiston to visit a class at Bates, and probably I'll be doing something on Friday too; I just can't recall what.

The flurry of October has begun, but this morning I'm feeling energetic and focused, which is a good sign, I think. Plenty of sleep, plenty of physical activity, time with home things, visits with friends, and a poem draft on the burner: all of this is good medicine.

Well, the front stoop is gone, but what a job. Tom spent the entire day beating at bricks and concrete with hammers and pry bars. It was a beast of a chore, and now the driveway is stacked with rubble and the rotted sill glares out in full hideous evidence.

There wasn't much I could do to help, other than make lunch, tote rubble, and offer good cheer. So I caught up with herb processing: getting dried ones into jars, getting fresh ones into the freezer. I picked a final batch of Serrano peppers and strung them up to dry. I cleaned and prepped another batch of wild mushrooms. The freezer is pretty much at capacity now: I really ought to stop looking for mushrooms, but it's so hard to ignore the riches when I spot them.

Tomorrow afternoon I'll be heading north for an overnight before my Tuesday high school class. So today I'll deal with groceries and get a start on the weekly housework, though there's no point in trying to clean floors during an active construction project. I want to bake a pear and cranberry pie. I want to work on a poem draft. I want to help Tom in whatever way I can, though mostly I can't do anything except be friendly.

Still, when it comes to construction projects, good cheer and friendliness aren't nothing. The default is complain about the mess, complain about the noise, complain about boot dirt, not to mention complain about the cost. Carpenters take a lot of shit on the job. Meanwhile, what I am is thrilled that we're getting a new solid home improvement. Also, I really like this guy. I'll make a hot lunch for him anytime he wants one.