I have started writing poems about western Pennsylvania. Already they are not like poems I have written before, for they are catching up bits of language and anecdote and using them as triggers to invent miniatures of historical fiction. Thus far, I have finished three of them: "The Quartermaster, 1753," "An Elephant in Greensburg, 1808," and "Leading Citizens, 1918." In each piece I am attempting to sound like the date--that is, to borrow and imitate language that mirrors 1753, 1808, or 1918. This has been a great pleasure, and my parrot brain has been surprisingly fluent. I suspect that will soon change, but for the moment I am in immersed in the ho-hum, workaday, unromantic ease that is my usual cue that I am writing what I ought to be writing.

Meanwhile, the rain keeps raining. The dog sighs. Soup bubbles on the stove. Laundry piles up in the baskets. The grass grows and grows, and daffodils dabble their wet heads in the dirt.