Midsummer 2015, Harmony, Maine

The corn will not be knee-high by the Fourth of July, but it may be ankle-high. The lettuce seeds would germinate more evenly if the cat would stop digging them up. What mean animals are biting off the tops of my baby beets and stealthily deleting the kohlrabi? On the bright side, I have picked four strawberries, the potatoes and brussels sprouts are glowing, the roses are fairy-tale-like, and I have not seen a single Japanese beetle . . . yet.

And there's book progress too. In a day or so, once various website issues are solved, I'll be making a formal publication announcement about The Conversation. The manuscript of Chestnut Ridge is dozing comfortably in a publisher's in-box, and I actually received a substantial royalty check for sales of Same Old Story (i.e., enough money to pay for a week's worth of groceries, i.e., much better than the 12 cents I recently earned for Tracing Paradise).

I've been working--slowly, slowly--on a few new poems, but perhaps for the first time in my writing life I'm not distressed but my paltry production. Seven books published or under contract, with two more manuscripts in flux! . . . and all in the space of eleven years, all while raising two boys and numerous farm animals and trying to behave like a functional adult who can earn a little money, keep a clean house, and weather death, cold, and loneliness. I have no idea how I did this. It all seems like a hallucination. Or perhaps I am convalescing from brain fever.