After I hang laundry today, I'm going to the apple orchard, where I'll walk to the top of the hill and stare out over the western mountains. My own yard is surrounded by a wall of trees, so a view is always a surprise and a refreshment. Now that the boys are back in school, I have to talk myself into doing things like this by myself--going for walks alone, reading almost as much as I want to, tinkering with two words in a poem instead of nagging someone to practice the piano. 

There's a certain guilty laziness to solitary work. 

I haven't written many poems during the past few months--too many prose and editing and kid obligations, but also I haven't been lazy and lonely enough. Now I'm revising a poem that I'm not sure I like, but then again I'm not sure I don't like it. Until 2:30 this afternoon, nobody but me is asking me to do anything else, so maybe I'll make some progress on figuring out what I think.

Perhaps part of the problem of teaching revision in the schools is the fact that classrooms are never the place where we learn the pleasures and demands of lingering.

 

Dinner: fried green tomatoes. Finally. I've been waiting for this moment all year.