I made better word-progress this week than I expected, given the number of meetings and appointments I was working around. Today, after a yoga class, I'll be back at my desk--this time focusing on a syllabus for next Tuesday's class. We've got yet another storm in the forecast for the weekend, but it looks like things should be cleaned up before I have to hit the road on Monday.

I've got all kinds of writing prompts sloshing around in my skull, and I'm looking forward to sorting them out for the kids to play with on Tuesday. And I've been copying out the Sonnets to Orpheus, and that's adding ingredients to my brain stew. I kind of feel as if I might be building up to, of all things, an essay. I haven't written one for ages. I've been all poems, all the time--really, since before we moved from Harmony. A few prose bits have struggled toward the light, but not many.

And I think I'm going to take the plunge and start submitting the embryo manuscript to a publisher or two.

This poem from the ms appeared in the anthology Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall.

Chores 

Dawn Potter

When the girls and their grandpap
Carried the slop pal down to the barn,
They discovered the hog was getting ready to die.
It lay on one side.
Its tail twitched.
Muck had crept into its snout.
It was like a rotten log in a swamp. 

The hog's breathing was heavy and slow.
Their grandpap shook his head and said,
Oh pig.
Now the girls knew for sure it was a goner.
They climbed up onto the fence
To watch the hog die.
But dying can take a long time.