Yesterday was our first (possibly our only?) hot, hot day . . . a day for ice tea and linen dresses and barefoot babies in the grass . . .  a day that magically transforms cats into torpid blobs of hair . . . a day to watch overweight corgis try to drink out of water fountains . . . a day to listen to the drivers of 80s-era muffler-challenged junkers blast obscure Clash songs through their permanently open windows . . . a day to sit on a shady deck playing cribbage and losing to Tom again . . . a day to eat macaroni salad with fiddleheads and ramps, to chase away love-sick moths, to curse the repetitive jingle of the ice cream truck . . . a day to sleep without a blanket and to wonder where we stored the box fan. We may not see this day's like again.

This morning I'm off to another session at the high school. Yesterday I worked on poems with two young women, and at the end of the class, one of them crowed to her classroom teacher, "Poetry is magic!" So, needless to say, I am full of joy and pride in her happiness. Today the two girls and I will sit together and go through our "two stars and a wish" revision conversation. Frost Place alums know that phrase as a shorthand version for "what do I notice? what do I wonder?" I am excited to hear these young women--one from Burundi, the other from Iraq; both so homesick; both still living with the shock of war and displacement; both overflowing with the smoldering emotions of adolescence--ask each other those questions about their work.