This morning I am hobbling around like a 90-year-old. I have no idea how I yanked my back, but undoubtedly I was doing something dangerous like taking a saucepan off a shelf.

Otherwise, things are fine. To the annals of foraging (a honed skill that I sadly cannot use much in Portland), I am delighted to add "free working dehumidifier" after my neighbor dragged one out to the sidewalk and I pounced on it. The find may not seem as thrilling as chanterelles and fiddleheads, but then again there are few charms to a damp basement.

Yesterday my publisher sent me the first proofs of Chestnut Ridge, and I will print it out today and start combing through it for errors. I wish I didn't have to be my own copyeditor, but such is life in the small-press world. At first glance, I am really pleased with how the pages look. The manuscript has a number of challenging poems, design-wise, and Jeff's done an excellent job of figuring out how to manage them.

I've got a new poem draft on a back burner, and maybe I'll get a chance to work on it today. I've started reading a history of the War of the Roses, and I'd like to copy out some more Blake. If my back cooperates, I'll garden and vacuum and such, but we'll see what the ibuprofen says.

Here's a bit from the Blake piece I was copying out on earlier this week. It's from a section of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell titled "A Song of Liberty."

1. The Eternal Female groaned! it was heard over all the Earth: 

2. Albions coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!

3. Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers and mutter across the ocean? France rend down thy dungeon;

4. Golden Spain burst the barriers of old Rome;

5. Cast thy keys O Rome into the deep down falling, even to eternity down falling,

6. And weep