Look closely. Behind the detritus of winter, those are snowdrops--spring flowers!--opening in mid-February on my street in Portland, Maine. Every year on the first warm days, as the snow recedes from the south side of a neighbor's house, these beauties appear. Flowers in February! In Maine! Always a miracle.

Yesterday was a good day all around. I think the inaugural Poets' Table program was a success; in any case, we got lots of cheerful feedback about it . . .  though my internet misbehaved throughout, which was annoying. And afterward Tom and I went for a long brisk walk through the snow melt, feeling very happy to be together, both of us knowing it though not talking about it. I love those moments, when we are so transparently un-mushy in our affections. Love as puddle stomping. I'm a fan.

Now today I gird myself for part 2 of Busy Work Weekend: the last session of the advanced chapbook book, which I've been prepping hard for all week. After those balance-related rants on this blog earlier this week, I felt I needed to come up with some better way to explain myself to my students--prompts, actions--that might help them step away from stasis into some new relationship with their work. So that's where my brain has been diving . . . thinking hard about their individual manuscripts and habits, creating personalized prompts for each participant. There are only 6 people in the class, but the job was still giant. I hope they work.

Here's a poem from the new book. I was talking to some friends recently about poet crushes. Teresa has had a lifelong infatuation with John Keats; David is head over heels with Sylvia Plath. Me, I'm in love with Hayden Carruth, that crabby old poet of the north country. This poem borrows one of his titles.

Song: The Famous Vision of America

 

                        after Hayden Carruth

 

The birds come and go at the feeders,

but so few.

I long for flocks of finches but all I get

is a single sparrow flitting in from the maples,

a lone nuthatch, upside down, then gone.

 

I don’t know why it pains me,

            this lack.

Perhaps it’s a fear that I haven’t passed

some necessary bird test,

haven’t intuited their deepest desires.

 

Used to be, every calf I met

            would eat out of my hand.

How long has it been

since I’ve felt an eager wet nose

thrusting against my cupped palms?

 

There was an emptiness, in that greedy snuffling

            touch;

an emptiness, too, in the bright

flicker of a cardinal on my back fence.

Too easy an ending to say that it’s mine.