I spent an hour yesterday morning talking about my western Pennsylvania project with a class of high school poets. Meanwhile, I discovered that, per usual, my embryonic short story was turning into a poem. I finished the Lowell chapter for The Conversation. I picked fiddleheads and made bread and mowed grass and chopped vegetables. I hung around in the kitchen talking to James, who is back home for the summer. I glowered at the frost coating the hood of my car. I said yes to two people who want to interview me. I ran errands during Paul's piano lesson. I started reading Colm Toibin's novel Brooklyn, I stared at the massive pile of books stacked on my desk, I picked wood chips out of the poodle, I listened to a Stevie Wonder record, and I thought about Whitman. I wished I were visiting New York City. I wished I were visiting London. I sang "Shenandoah" with Paul. I sent encouraging emails to poets and teachers. I reread "There Was a Child Went Forth" and was amazed again. I lay on my bed clutching the stories of Alice Munro to my heart. I told Paul I wouldn't take him to see the movie about Gatsby until he'd finished reading the book about Gatsby. I looked at a map of arctic Canada. I learned that a book review I'd recently written "is going down [on one particular online forum] like a chorus of farts at the funeral of a respected dignitary." I was then invited to write another review for the journal. I didn't know what to make of this conundrum but did not visit the online forum and thus managed to have a good night's sleep. I watched the clouds thicken and shift, darken and glow. I listened to a thrush sing in the wet dawn.