Minus 1 here this morning . . . but that's comparatively warm compared to other places in the north country. Northern New England is cold, and I can't figure out why so many people I know went skiing this weekend. They must be crazy. 

I spent yesterday sitting beside the fire and doing a ton of marketing stuff--newsletter writing, program pushing, and such. Who could have predicted that self-promotion would be my job? Ugh. However, if I want to teach, I must grit my teeth and persevere, despite the inner voices that tell me to stop drawing attention to myself.

Today I'll step back a little from that. I've got contest manuscripts to read, and I'd like to fiddle with some poem drafts. Maybe I'll cook something fun. Tom has started making our new bed frame, so housecleaning would be stupid, given the amount of sawdust he'll track up from the basement (not complaining; it can't be helped). And I do love his projects. The bed will be simple and beautiful--made from ash boards cut from trees on our Harmony land. A little piece of home to sleep on. 

This week will be busy: filled with desk and house things, and then Paul and a friend are driving up from NYC to spend a few days with us. Probably I'd be smart to try to do my writing today. Probably I'd be smart to try to take a walk this afternoon, before our next snow-sleet-rain-wind-mess storm starts up tonight.

Here's a poem from the new book. 

Have You Never Been Mellow?

 

Dawn Potter

Four years after Olivia

Newton-John first inquired, I found

myself attending ninth grade with

Dawn Mello, a conundrum,

 

given that I, too, was Dawn but one

who wasn’t sure what mellow

meant (with or without a w).

Also, why never?

 

I didn’t know much

in those days, and Dawn Mello

and I co-connived at nothing

because she smoked cigarettes

 

between classes and I

didn’t even know how to buy them.

It was that kind of high school.

But back to mellow. I imagined

 

it to be one of those real

California words that only made

sense to people with island

tans and oversized smiles,

 

neither of which I was allowed

to sport. It follows that Dawn Mello 

also could not have been mellow

as she had skin like a pierogi

 

and her smile was more of an

eyeroll than a chant.

In California they would not

have known what to do with us,

 

two mushrooms from the eastern

lands. They would have locked us up

alone in a special classroom,

leaving us to obfuscate our

 

dawn issues from morning till

bus time, though at least I would have

learned to smoke. I can’t say

what she would have learned.

 

And none of this

answers the question.

[from Accidental Hymn (Deerbook Editions, forthcoming)]