Tonight my band, Doughty Hill, is unexpectedly playing at a benefit dinner at Foxcroft Academy (Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, 5-7 p.m.) for a local family who lost their home to a fire. So if you feel like eating spaghetti and listening to whatever it is we might be playing, stop by.

During the rest of the day, I will be editing a Richard Wilbur bio, planting sage and parsley, mowing grass, hard-boiling eggs, harvesting many pounds of rhubarb, and thinking about a talk on Sylvia Plath's poetry that I'll be giving at the Frost Place in June.

It has been fun watching my son sign up for his first college classes: acting intensive, dance intensive, "The History of Drama" (a combined lit/drama class), and "Shakespeare's History Plays" (a literature class). I am so happy for him--finally, he's getting the chance to live in the world he has been longing to inhabit. Meanwhile, I have a Monday of poetry and poets, and plants and music, and working with my hands and making food. I should never complain about anything ever again.

Also, there is one lovely benefit to living apart from my husband for most of the week: when we do see each other, we are starry-eyed. This is not a bad thing, given that we are fifty years old and have known each other since we were nineteen.

Driving Home

Dawn Potter

In the mirror, a hitchhiking Hasid

raises a hand, coat flying in the breeze.

Behind him the green-hazed hills

fold one upon another.

Everything is a poem.

Full as a cup,

delicate as a peeled egg,

I write my love on air,

on sunlight stealing through a murky

window, on a traveler’s windswept beard.

The distance between us narrows like a wish.

At sunset, you will step into my kitchen,

your eyes singing, “I love you.”

I am driving home to you so fast.

[from Boy Land (Deerbrook Editions, 2004)]