So remember yesterday's post? When I was writing about writing at a moment when I thought I didn't feel like writing? (Is that sentence even comprehensible?) Well, about an hour later, I opened an email from a friend. It contained a stanza from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn," which my friend, both a poet and a student of military history, had sent to me on the anniversary of the Revolutionary War battle. I stared at the title for a moment. And then I said to myself: Concord Street Hymn . . . because Concord is the street I live on . . . and surely . . . but, wait . . . I have a first line . . .

And thus the dirty dishes sat in the sink, and I scribbled a poem from beginning to end in 40 minutes or so--a poem that made me so happy that I did what judicious poets are never supposed to do and immediately submitted it to a journal editor . . . who wrote back to me that afternoon and, believe it or not, accepted it.

The poet lived happily ever after for the rest of the day.

* * *

This morning, I have tumbled back into the regularly scheduled mud and gravel. We've got another raw, windy day ahead of us, and poor Tom has to spend it all in an unheated building. Meanwhile, I'll be wrestling with someone else's footnotes and fretting about our food supply. The boy is angsty about his future, and the cat blames me for the weather, and the president is a monster.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

--from "Concord Hymn," by R. W. Emerson