It's summer now: temperatures in the 80s during the day, in the sticky 60s at night. The bedroom fan hums, and the basement dehumidifier hums, and cold pink wine chills in the refrigerator. We eat salads for dinner and berries for dessert. The cat stretches himself melodramatically across a cool tile floor. The tomatoes grow as fast as radioactive plant overlords.

Upstairs, standing in my dim, north-facing study, I stare out into deep maple shade, at drying laundry, at a neighbor's blooming dogwood tree. For the moment I have nothing to do in this room but edit books--a small recess, after a breathless year of teaching, writing, editing, advising. For the moment I feel strangely one-dimensional. This state of affairs will change, and soon: poem manuscripts will pop up in my email; teaching gigs will roll around on the calendar. But after a week of Frost Place intensity, life seems to have retreated into a manila envelope, and the contrast is extreme. This may sound like complaining, but isn't. Without these plain patches I might lose my mind. Certainly I'd lose my concentration, and my good cheer. Still, I feel a bit of melancholy, a pleasant and peaceable melancholy, as I stand here in my tree-darkened room. I feel like I'm my own shadow.