It's a lovely, sunshiny morning, with everything glinting wet from the sudden big thunderstorm that wrecked our cookout last night. For a few minutes we were sitting around the fire pit drinking wine with our neighbor. And then the skies blackened, and lightning rolled in, and rain started to fall, and Tom had to figure out how to cook the rest of the meal in the kitchen.

All went well, and we had a fun dinner party anyway: he did manage to grill the peppers, onions, and eggplant before the deluge began, and he broiled and fried the kebabs and the other lamb bits he'd prepped. I'd made fresh salsa and a green bean and black grape salad, and we finished with a lemon tart for dessert, which has become one of my favorite company desserts: pretty, delicious, not cloyingly sweet, and completely reliable . . . e.g., the crust doesn't shrink during prebaking, the filling sets perfectly every time, and the pie pops out of the tart pan without sticking or tearing or otherwise breaking my heart.

This morning I'll be hauling firewood and reading the Iliad, and then I'll spend the afternoon upstairs teaching my chapbook class. Our focus today will be on adding, subtracting, and moving poems around in a manuscript. My nervousness about the class seems to have ebbed away, maybe because the homework responses were so terrific. Now I'm simply looking forward to spending the afternoon with these smart people and their fascinating poems.