I arrived home yesterday at 5 p.m. I leave for the Frost Place at noon today. My clothes are dirty, my refrigerator is empty, and my grass is tall. I seem to have forgotten how to write poems. Sentences also are difficult. Here's hoping the skill returns before tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, I drink coffee without milk, here in my almost empty house. The boys are far away, living it up in a Saratoga motel with their grandparents. The poodle and her new silly haircut are languishing at the kennel. Tom is asleep. Only the parakeet and I are awake, and eyeing one another.

There: I managed five rusty sentences. I feel like my sturdy flourishing diction has wilted away in the sun. Clearly I need shade and a watering can.

By the way, an excerpt from my long poem "The White Bear" appears in the new Green Mountains Review. The journal's website hasn't been updated, but the issue does indeed exist; and if you order it, it will arrive in your mailbox just as it did in mine.

Dinner last night: Damariscotta oysters on the half shell with rice vinegar and garlic flowers. Picked crab with cherry tomatoes, tiny peas, cilantro, and lettuce. Coldish white wine. Cannoli. Call it, if you will, the last romantic meal of the season.