Summer is such an overwhelming season, and this year seems more overwhelming than usual. I have so much editorial work that I wake in the night unromantically asking myself, "Did you really remember to renumber Figure 13.1 as Box 13.2?" or "Braille: capped or lowercase?" During my short trip to North Haven, I intended at the very least to wake up early in the morning and deal with a poetry editing project I'm involved in. It wouldn't have been like real writing, but at least the subject matter would have been congenial. But no. I woke up early and read a Canadian page-turner. Then I ate an overlarge breakfast and looked at the sea for a number of hours. Occasionally I picked up a rock. Before long I was in need of a nap, and the pattern repeated. Just substitute "dinner" for "breakfast." Laziness overcame me like the flu.

Now here I am at home again, back in the land of weeds and lawn mowing and a shockingly dusty bedroom and incipient grocery shopping and bean picking and chicken-house cleaning, etc., etc., not to mention the editorial volcano belching its summaries and reference lists. Occasionally I reminisce about being a writer. "Once, long, long ago, I wrote a poem." Oh well. I'm writing this letter to you now. And someday it will be January, and I will be alone and lonely, and the poems will creep out of their corners to gnaw at my ankles.