I stole some time yesterday afternoon and starting playing with the material I'd gleaned from my visit to the archive last week. In the library I'd been copying out sentences from an almost unreadable 1868 diary; and as I worked, my brain automatically kept filling in words that I couldn't quite read. As a result, I found myself inhabiting the syntax, grammar, tone, and style of this diarist's writing, but surprising myself with strange imagery or peculiar adjectives, which nonetheless seemed to reflect the writer . . .  even clarify her in some way.

So yesterday, as I fiddled with this hybrid material, I found myself stitching my copied sentences into small poems that sound like sort of like dejected sewing samplers. I'm beginning to get excited about the possibilities of this mis-copying project, and very sad about the life of this lonesome diarist.

On another subject: just to be fair, I thought I'd give you a glimpse of the ugly backyard. Here is my compost pile, some old two-by-fours that will go under the future woodpile, and some scraggy weeds.

And here's the clothesline. I appear to be the only person in the neighborhood who hangs out clothes.