Well, here I am, back at my desk . . . overwhelmed, of course, which should be no surprise to anyone. I have band practice tonight, a workshop to teach tomorrow morning, a convalescent son to coddle, and a perfectly healthy son to prod; also, a book to write and a manuscript to edit and an absolutely filthy house to clean. Clearly Tom and Paul spent five days alone in the house without taking off their boots.

Meanwhile, as I sat around in James's hospital room for those five days, I received, count them, four rejection letters. You'd think these journals had colluded in figuring out just how obnoxious their timing could be. It was comical, in a squash-a-poet-into-a-trashcan kind of way. Anyway, I now have a whole bunch of western Pennsylvania poems available for submission and not one speck of energy to do any research into who might care to read them.

Tomorrow morning I teach a Frost poem to whatever teachers show up at my session at the annual Maine Council for English Language Arts convention. If one of those teachers is you, I promise to be sunnier than I'm feeling at the moment. One more complete night's sleep is sure to help.