Thanks to a sea breeze, Portland had a bit of a respite yesterday, weather-wise, but the heat will be back today. I took advantage of the relative coolness to chop weeds along the stone wall, run the vacuum, cook a hot meal. That means today I can save my energy for some desultory dusting, hand-washing winter woolens, and making spring rolls and sashimi for dinner. I will have to pick peas, but I'll save that for late in the afternoon.

Midday I'm hoping to find a bubble of time for writing. I still feel twingy and edgy about poems, and that's a good sign. And here's a note my friend Nate sent me this morning. It's something to ponder.

"The metallurgist, like the blacksmith and, before him, the potter, is a 'master of fire.' It is by means of fire that he brings about the passage of the material from one state to another."

It was your namesake that first caught my attention, however simple--I'd like to think of you, and poets in general, as "master[s] of fire" that transforms material. The metaphor is most likely not original, but it's cool, nonetheless.

And in continuing to read this (Mircea Eliade's A History of Religious Ideas) it discusses how most blacksmiths depicted as making divine weapons to defeat monstrous adversaries were also songsmiths and poets.