I spent the weekend workshopping poems in a cabin in the Dartmouth Second College Grant, at this confluence of two small rivers. The college-owned property covers about 27,000 acres, and is located in northern New Hampshire, close to Lake Umbagog. All of the poets in attendance were associated in some way with the Frost Place, though I really only knew one of them at all well and had never met two of them before. So I was a bit anxious about the outing beforehand, in the way one might be anxious about summer camp.

But the weekend turned out the be spectacular: lively company, great food, glorious views, complex conversations, rich poems, comic snafus, and an adorable dog. And a miracle: a young yearling cow moose spent the entire afternoon loafing in front of our cabin as we sat at the table workshopping. Sometimes she napped in the grass; sometimes she stood alongside the river; sometimes she browsed in the river. Clearly she was comfortable with our presence; we felt no sense of alarm from her. She just seemed to want to hang out with us for a while. And then, eventually, she slipped away, striding down the river toward tomorrow. As you can see from this photo, she was on the thin side, which worried us, but she was up and active and eating, so we are hoping for the best, though I have my doubts that she'll make it through the winter. It was a once-in-a-lifetime afternoon, really, to spend such casual time in the wild with a single native animal. I don't expect this to ever happen again.

And here I am, with the sun setting over the river, reading a poem about cabbage rolls.

Update: Catching up on my email, I discovered that Vox Populi has posted "Average Land," one of the pieces I finished during my crazy poetry-writing summer.