Yesterday was a scorcher; last night was a sweat box; today and tomorrow and the next day will be repeats. For a few days, the Alcott House, ensconced beneath its enormous maples, stayed relatively cool; but now it's just as hot here as it is everywhere else. Fans run continuously. I brew fresh ice tea several times a day. The cat flops underfoot. I find myself asking dumb questions such as "Will listening to cool jazz help me feel cooler?"

For dinner I put together spring rolls (filled with lettuce, cucumbers, and herbs) and sashimi (bluefin, Scottish salmon, local scallops). Then later in the evening we welcomed a surprise overnight guest--a Frost Place friend who was in town unexpectedly--and I felt embarrassed about our lack of air conditioning. It's hard to believe that this time last week she and I were shivering in a 40-degree barn.

Believe it or not, I wrote yet another decent poem draft yesterday. And I'm starting to dream about my imaginary baby daughter again--always a sign that something is burgeoning in my poet life. For nearly two decades I have dreamed off and on about this little girl. She is dark eyed, with dark curly hair, and looks nothing like my sons. But she is clearly mine. From the beginning, my friend Jilline (my dear comrade, dead now for thirteen years) declared that this apparition was an art baby, not my hormones trying to convince me to have another child. And so now, whenever my imaginary daughter appears, I know that things are looking up, that I am writing and will be writing, and also that Jilline is somewhere crowing, "I told you so." I have not seen my art baby since I left Harmony, but last night she found me, she's figured out where I've been hiding, here she comes scooting across the floor in her little sage-green dress, and she's laughing.