Oddly, the birds in rural Vermont are quieter than the birds in Portland at 5 a.m.

My dad got home yesterday afternoon. He is very weak but he is doing okay.

I don't see how they are going to manage without me any time soon. I hope I am wrong about this.

Tom sent me friendly texts about turtles he saw on his walk. It is surprising how much better a friendly text about turtles has made me feel.

Teaching tonight; hoping to find a moment for class prep. If not, I'll be winging it. What else can I do?

I'm reading Tessa Hadley's Free Love and the poems of Andrew Marvell. Here's a bit from "The Garden" that I keep going back to again and again:

Meanwhile, the mind, from pleasures less,

Withdraws into its happiness:

The mind, that ocean where each kind

Does straight its own resemblance find,

Yet it creates, transcending these,

Far other worlds, and other seas,

Annihilating all that's made

To a green thought and a green shade.

In an hour or so I'll be heading to Vermont, where I'll be staying for the next several days, or longer. My dad may be getting out of the hospital today, and I need to be on the spot in the house when he arrives. So, first, coffee; then hauling cot mattress, bedding, zoom equipment, etcetera, etcetera, into the hot little non-air-conditioned car for the steamy drive west.

All of my tiredness is resurfacing, and I'm teary about leaving T in the midst of our weekend together, but this is the ways things are and must be.

At least I've got a new library book to keep me company.

A quiet morning, dark and humid. The birds are singing, and Ruckus and Jack are prowling down the sidewalk. Tom is upstairs asleep, and I am in my couch corner, in my red bathrobe, with my white cup and saucer, recovering from a little pollen-triggered sneezing fit.

Late in the day yesterday a small thunderstorm wandered through--not much rain, not much thunder, but enough to dampen and intensify the dense, vibrating greens of late spring. In the evening light I slowly wandered from bed to bed in the garden, the two cats trailing me, just letting the colors and shapes, the shadows and scents filter into me.

During the day I did a lot of weeding and cultivating in the Hill Country, where the early spring ephemeral leaves have finally wilted back enough to reveal the soil beneath. Iris and lupines are budding; white bridal veil and azaleas are phosphorescent in the gloaming light. That section of the yard looks better than it ever has before, though it's difficult to manage . . . lots of tree roots and stones, lots of persistent weeds, and the not always lovely leftovers from previous homeowner attempts at landscaping. But it's in good shape now, at least for a couple of weeks.

Today I'll turn my attention to the vegetable garden, and to figuring out how to reclaim the damaged sections out front. And I'll also try out the new trimmer that Tom bought for me. The previous one was cheap junk, and died in in its tracks yesterday, so T trundled me to Lowe's and picked out a sturdier one that's still light enough for me to easily wield. That's the problem with string trimmers--most of them are so damn heavy, even for a tallish woman with relatively good upper-body strength.

And later in the day: grocery shopping, reading, a nap, a slow dinner.

The news from Vermont is positive, but both mind and body improvement are halting and slow. Though he wants to come home so much, he's in no shape to do that yet. He is eating, and moving; he is off the drugs that were triggering the confusion, but he's still unclear about how real those terrible dreams were. He wants to believe that they were false but he can't quite wrap his head around the notion that they were hallucinations.

 It's raining every so slightly onto our quiet neighborhood. Three days without construction ahead of us, and I am going nowhere, and I am so relieved.

Yesterday the workmen spent a chunk of the day tidying us up: sweeping sidewalks, wetting down the dusty road, smoothing the new soil in gardens, even re-laying my walkway paving stones. Then they knocked off work mid-afternoon and gave the street back to us for a few days. What a difference this team of nice guys has made to a brutal street project.

I think I must be feeling better because I didn't take a nap at all: no more strange alien-abduction sleeps, thank goodness. Instead I devoted myself to the backyard: mowing, trimming, weeding, watering, washing chairs. I'll tackle the front gardens this weekend, in and around the little spats of rain. Three days at home with Tom. I can't tell you how good that phrase sounds to me.

My dad is now drinking broth, tubes and catheter are out, GI system beginning to function. The big upsetting issue has been his delirium . . . a side-effect of the intense medications but disturbing to see and hear about--accusations of murder and imprisonment, etc. But this is starting to lift too, so we are all feeling less horrified.

I keep asking my mom when I should come back, and she keeps telling me to wait, so that is what I am doing.

It's important not to push her and boss her around. It's important not to use my own anxiety as a way to increase her anxiety. I know these things, and I keep reminding myself to stay quiet and patient, and mostly I am doing okay at the task.

This morning I am going to walk up to the library and check out the new Tessa Hadley novel that's on hold for me. I'm going to finish this small cup of coffee, and I'm going to write a few notes, and I'm going to fill some vases with flowers. I might drive to the fish market and pick out something for dinner. I'll talk to my mom and my sister, as I do every day. I'll likely talk to my sons. I'll take a walk with Tom. I'll do some planting for my neighbor. This will be a plain and dull Memorial Day weekend, which is exactly what I want it to be.

The jackhammering has recommenced, but at the other end of the street, so yesterday I was able to feel at least slightly detached from the street construction, slightly being the operative word. The narrow road is still packed with every kind of machine labeled CAT, dust and grit rising in clouds, shouts and clanks and beeps and crashing and grinding and bambambam-bambambam from dawn till dusk.

Still, at 11 a.m. I sat down on the couch with a cup of tea, and at 1:30 p.m. I woke up next to a full cup of cold tea on the coffee table and didn't know what had happened to me. I guess you could point out that I was a little bit tired, but what a weird nap, like being taken over by aliens or something. Even the jackhammer couldn't keep me conscious. Not to mention that I'd had no intention of taking a nap at 11 a.m.

Overall I feel like I've collided with every kind of machine labeled CAT, and now I'm stiff and slow and convalescent. In fact I am completely fine, not sick, not overworked; I know all of my bodily symptoms are related to distress about my dad . . . but how fascinating our minds and bodies are, how intertwined and mysterious.

This morning I will again try to make it through my exercise class, though I could barely keep up with Wednesday's, which is not like me. My hope is to spend much of the day slowly working through my yard chores, mostly in back, away from the construction--mowing, trimming, weeding, watering. But who knows, the giant nap monster may snatch me once again. I am powerless to resist.

 Last night I launched my newest collection, Accidental Hymn. I was, as always, nerved up. But so many people came! It was so strange and wonderful to have such an audience. I couldn't tell who exactly was there, but I glimpsed names from many facets of my life . . . a woman I went to high school with, my son's theater teacher, writing friends from many places, my sister . . . It was stunning to feel so many virtual arms around me.

I have gotten into the habit of thinking of myself as a loner, as out of the loop. But that's not really true. Time passes, friends collect. It was incredible to feel your affection. Turns out I needed that so much.

As my days go these days, yesterday was relatively calm. Construction guys moved down the street to destroy my neighbors' flowerbeds, my dad is hanging on and may be transferred from the ICU in a few days, I managed to do some housework and cook a meal and teach a class and prep for tonight's reading . .  . 

At night I have long phone calls with my sister in which we try to hold each other up and plot how best to keep my mom steady and fret about what rehab and recovery and relapse and all of the unknowns might have in store for us. And then I get into bed and fall into a conked-on-the-head sleep.

One thing that has been so helpful is your kindness. It is surprising, the power of good will. Evil churns on and on in this world. Schoolchildren are massacred. Grandfathers are shot in the back. But when my sister got pulled over for talking to me on her cellphone while driving home, and after she apologized and told the cop she was wrong and explained why she was talking to me, his response was "You are the first person today who has told me the truth.  I hope everything turns out well for your dad." Me, I've had construction guys worrying about my plants, a neighbor rescuing a shovelful of thyme, another neighbor taking down my laundry for me, people from all times and places in my life signing up to hear me read poems tonight.

I may not be able to thank you personally. But know that your goodness matters.

At 7 a.m. someone knocked on the door. It was one of the construction guys, telling me that today was the day they'd be digging a chunk out of my garden. I did not cry but I came close to crying. Instead, I went outside right away and moved plants and rocks and then hid my eyes till the deed was done. I thought that would be the worst of it. But then, after lunch, another knock on the door. They'd nicked the sewer line and they needed to get into my basement to make sure the house line hadn't been damaged. Up and down the stairs the men went; then soon, a specialist showed up, with a sewer-line camera. He walked in and announced with a big smile, "I put in your sewer line!" Okay, so that was a bright spot: seven years ago we'd accidentally hired the Expert. He bustled around down there for a while and then reappeared to pet the flirty cat and assure me that the house line was fine; the only damage was streetside. Good news overall, but this meant that they were going to have to dig another chunk out of my garden to reseal the connection.

So.

I realize a damaged vegetable garden is the smallest of my problems right now, but still it feels tragic. I am not crying; I'm even laughing a little. But still.

And yet, small things: the construction guys were so nice and so apologetic, eager to help me move rocks and plants. You could tell they had gardens at home, or their parents had gardens: they took the damage seriously; they understand why this was painful.

At one point, in the evening, I looked out the window and saw that the excavator had pushed the chunk of sidewalk they'd removed down against some of the parked equipment. And on top of that chunk was a bright blooming clump of my thyme, which just this morning had been flowing over the stone along the walkway. So after dinner I went outside to the shed and fetched my shovel and started over to rescue it. As it happened, one of my neighbors was already there, lifting up the chunk. I'm a forager, and I thought, Oh, he's going to stick it in his yard; great. I was glad to know he wanted it. But no. What he was doing was carrying it back to my garden. He didn't know I was outside getting ready to fetch it, but he did know that I would care about it.

This was the sweet ending to a very tough day. And a sweeter one was the late-night text from my sister saying that my dad got through the second surgery very well, and is now on the first step to recovery.

I am home, for a little while anyway. Everything is in a holding pattern, and this seemed to be the best solution: for all of us to try to deal with daily life as best we can. My dad is in what is basically an induced coma in the ICU, with the second surgery planned for today. But according to the nurse, Dad is one of the "most boring" patients on the unit, and we all had to laugh. Boring at the ICU is good news! His vitals are good; there's no sign of infection.

And so Tom and I drove home through the 90-degree heat in our non-air-conditioned car, and he will go back to work this morning, and I will go back to work this morning, and the jackhammering will go back to work this morning, and we will wait for the results of today's surgery and see what happens when the sedation is lifted.

Of course this is the week of my book launch. Another stress, but I can do it in Vermont if I have to. I can cancel it if I have to. For now it's still happening in Maine. Thanks for being patient with me in this regard. It's impossible to be sure of anything.

Just a quick note to thank you for your kind notes on yesterday's post. I'm in Vermont, where my dad had emergency surgery for a twisted bowel. He is stable, given the severity of the situation. Not sure if I'll be here for a few days or if I'll head home today and come back later. We'll figure that out this morning.

 

This is the scene outside my house. That's my driveway blocked, and my narrow street in shambles, but what you can't see is the noise of the big excavator hammering ledge for 10 hours straight. Being in the house feels like being in a day-long chronic low-grade earthquake: everything shaking and vibrating and clanking and rattling, hour after hour after hour. Working from home has lost all of its charm. I can't garden outside; I can't think inside; I feel as if my house is collapsing around me.

The hammer-free weekend is a blessing, but now my dad is in the emergency room with an as yet undiagnosed G-I issue, and so life goes on with the worry and the strain. I'll keep you posted.

The street construction has begun in earnest, and it's awful. Yesterday: hours upon hours spent jackhammering ledge, the tiny narrow street packed with men and giant equipment and massive iron structures and pipes and sluicing water. And this is supposed to go on for weeks. Kindly, the excavator operator told me exactly what part of my garden he was going to have to dig up to hook up our water lines . . . just an edge, fortunately, so this weekend I'll spend some time moving plants and trying not to cry. 

Anyway, enough of my woe. I did go out last night to write, so that was good. I got six poems accepted this week--six!--so that's something too. Readers seem to be responding to my new collection, which is gratifying. I planted six tomato plants before the rain started. 

But now I have to endure another day of jackhammering. It's hard to concentrate on my work in this environment, and today is the day I need to seriously suss out what I'll be doing for Wednesday's book launch, so I'm a little worried. But I suppose I'll figure out how to manage.

"It was now that she developed her feelings about reading at random which would form the backbone of her essays on being a self-educated reader. Like all her central preoccupations, the idea of 'the common reader' is rooted in childhood and adolescence."

"'Reading makes me intensely happy, and culminates in a fit of writing always.'"

"'I feel always that writing is an irreticent thing to be kept in the dark--like hysterics.'"

* * *

These three extracts appear in Hermione Lee's biography of Viriginia Woolf; the latter two are quotations from Woolf's own letters as a young woman.

I was talking, over coffee yesterday, to Monica about why I am periodically drawn to reading the biographies of writers I admire . . . and this is why: because I love to watch how their brains learn to work. These three extracts carry me from the practice of reading (random, obsessive), into the purpose of reading (the triggering of deep pleasure, which in turn opens the writing door), into the odd, wall-less, floor-less, roof-less, unsettling experience of writing itself, that embarrassing, "irreticent thing."

I feel these comments deeply, of course. Being the reader I am, and have been for all of my life--greedy, ambitious, random--I am drawn to another of my kind. There are not so many of us. But I'm also interested in the way in which this reading voracity is the foundation for the very different sensation of writing-- so much shakier, so much diffidence; the nerves on fire; unease and an urge toward secrecy. I recognize this, too: how I have all my writing life felt as if I should keep my identity a secret; how I sometimes have to purposely assume a bardic persona in my poems as a way to argue with my urge to hide.

* * *

But why hide, when reading and writing have been the open sky of my life? It is a conundrum.

I think I'm just going to have to accept that this is going to be a scatterbrained week for me. It's fine, it's good really, I'm not awash in deadlines, but of course I still feel guilty for not nailing myself to the desk.

Yesterday I went for a bike ride alone and for a long walk with my neighbor; this morning I'm having coffee with the novelist I confabbed with after my archive talk. I taught last night, and tonight I'll be going to a poetry reading, and one or the other of my sons is always on the phone, and I keep shoehorning work in around the edges, but the social does seem to have bubbled to the surface. And it's so hard to stay out of the garden.

In good news, I did not get a migraine from my new glasses prescription. In fact, my eyes feel better than they have for months, so all is well there. On the whole, my private life is jaunty, though I wonder how this can be, given the burden of our historical moment. How can horror and contentment exist simultaneously? And yet they do.

We had a real rain last night, thank goodness, and this morning the garden is soaked and gleaming. Already I've got towels in the washing machine, readying for the line and a beautiful sunny breezy low-70s day.

Yesterday turned out to be sort of a mishmash, as I was on the phone for much of the morning instead of at  my desk. And now today looks to be another one. I got a call that my new glasses are in, and they are likely to affect my schedule. The switch in progressive prescriptions routinely gives me a brief terrible migraine; and given that I've got to teach tonight, the migraine must happen early in the day. But once the headache is over, I'll be very, very glad to have better vision.

So: migraine recovery, editing, class prep, email writing, laundry, getting a brisket into the oven before I start class, taking a bike ride or a walk (depending on the toe situation), cleaning floors . . .

In the garden things are looking magnificent. My peas (in the Breadbasket) and spinach (in the Lane boxes) are spectacular. The Shed Patch overflows with speedwell and phlox. Deep purple iris speckle the green Hill Country. Buds are swelling on the peonies in the Parlor and Library beds and the Lantern Waste. The infant clematis is already climbing up Barry's Arch. The pepper seedlings are settling in beautifully on the Terrace. Strawberries are in bloom in the Lurk, blueberries in bloom on Concord Plain.

[If you are new to this blog, you should know that one of my son's pandemic pastimes was to name all of the sub-environments in this little yard. I've kept it up, as it's a very good way to record new plantings in my notebook; plus, it's fun to imagine the yard as an island.]

The little northern city by the sea is wrapped in fog, and the air is cool and densely humid: briny and wet; a cocoon of cloud; birds singing like mad and the garden glowing green under the pale ocean mist.

Island weather. A delight.

Yesterday, between minor rain showers, I hobbled through lawn mowing and trimming, weeding and planting. My toe is certainly not broken, but it is ugly and sore, and it was slowing me down. Still, I got a lot done: okra and sunflowers sowed; tulips cut down so that a new crop of flowers--speedwell, phlox, columbine, lilacs, iris--can billow into center stage. I always feel sad about cutting down flowers, but am always at how quickly my eye readjusts to the new glories.

Today I'll go back to desk work (a new editing project, class prep for tomorrow), plus grocery shopping and housecleaning and the rest of my usual Monday obligations. Yesterday a journal accepted all three poems I sent them, so that was a good reminder to stop procrastinating with the submissions . . . 

We had a lovely morning on Peaks Island. The weather was hot, and the birds were busy: dozens of eiders surfing in the high tide along the rocks; yellow warblers among the reeds and scrubby swamp alders; a pair of eagles being harassed by crows. And then back home for a nap and a shower; and in the evening we had our first cookout of the season: lamb burgers with yogurt sauce, sautéed peppers and almonds, roasted potatoes, spring's first big servings of homegrown salad greens, and my neighbor brought strawberry-rhubarb crisp and vanilla ice cream.

Today I have lots of yard work to do, but I don't know how much I'll get done. Rain is forecast, off and on all day, and we sorely need the water, but it does throw a wrench into my mowing and weeding plans.  I might just have to sit around and read. What a shame.

That could be just as well, however, as this morning I am dealing with what I don't think is a broken toe . . . but then again might be one: the result of nighttime cat bad behavior and me getting up to throw him out of the bedroom and then tripping over a box fan that I didn't see because I wasn't wearing my glasses. The usual ridiculous scenario of accidents. Whatever the case, my toe hurts and I'm hobbling this morning, and it's a good thing we weren't planning our island hike for today.

It's going to be warm today--80 degrees!--and Tom and I are taking the morning off and going to Peaks Island. For a change I don't have to work at all this weekend, and the freedom feels luxurious. We won't stay all day, but it will be lovely to walk, to climb on the rocks, to watch the water and the trees. And then tonight: the first firepit of the season, dinner with our neighbor, the cat prowling among the lawn chairs . . .

Yesterday I planted peppers, marigolds, calendula, zinnias, basil, lavender, and a clematis. By next weekend tomatoes and eggplant should go in. Tomorrow I may sow okra and sunflowers, and certainly I'll have to mow and weed.

But today will be play. I will sit on a beach with The Duchess of Malfi and stare out into the bay. I will eat a bagel with whitefish and worry about sunburns. I will not let my hat blow off on the boat. 

Last night's talk went well, I think. I was fascinated by the other projects discussed: a historian's discovery of a secret identity hidden within story she'd been researching; a trove of Penobscot oral histories. But I also had an incident of my own. After I finished my talk, my chat start filling with excited messages from a local novelist who had gotten a bee in her bonnet about my project. As luck would have it, I'd recently read, and liked, her memoir, and so the two of us had a furtive fizzy confab about issues of structure which was quite thrilling. We've got a coffee date planned and we're eager to keep talking. Clearly this was a big moment, in which writers who sort of knew each other beforehand suddenly got very excited about each other's brain. So this morning I'm still feeling buzzy and thrilled.

Today will be relatively quiet, I hope. I finished an editing project yesterday; and with the archive talk behind me, I'd like to give a bit of attention to my own writing: ponder over revisions, transcribe poem blurts out of my notebook, think about submissions, maybe copy out some Dante. I'd like to work in the garden; maybe I'll buy some plants . . . Tom overslept this morning, so he's just flown out of the house, and I am now recovering from the flurry. The air is fog and drip; the grass is Kelly green; summer is poised like a tiger, just out of vision.

These days, the birds begin their clamor so early. I lie in my cocoon of waking sleep, man and cat coiled against me, and the birds shout, and a train mourns, and the night thins into a brown and fragile quilt, and the window blind taps, taps against the sill, back and forth, back and forth, in a breath that feels as rich as memory.

Already it is 50 degrees outside, and the temperature is supposed to climb into the high 60s . . . our first real warmth this season. The bedroom window is now always open, and yet, just last week, I was lighting fires in the wood stove.

I did a remarkable thing earlier this week: I purchased an air conditioner. This is a shocking development as I have never in my life lived in a home with air conditioning. But the Alcott House's upstairs is stuffy, and Portland is much warmer at night than Harmony was, and we have new wiring in my study, and I have decided that now and then, on the hottest days and nights, we could use some relief. Still, I feel like I've copped out in some way. I've lost my toughness. I've given in to bourgeois comfort. A dishwasher, a new mattress, and now this. At least I still have a clothesline and bitten nails and no microwave.

Today I'll be futzing over that talk I need to give this evening for the program "Found in the Archives: Stories of Buried Treasure." Here's the zoom info, if you're interested. It starts at 6 p.m. ET, and I'll be talking about my approach to creative research.

But first I'll be on my bike, floating among the gravestones at the cemetery, with this soft wind in my face, hoping for the scent of lilacs; with this vague sea-haze draping the houses and shops, among these trudging schoolchildren, these dogs and runners and wandering solitaries.

Toward the end of last night's class, I asked participants to think about what gives them satisfaction within their own work . . . not necessarily equating satisfaction with joy or accomplishment--but rather, in the process and creation of the art, what gives them the deep pleasure of maker or explorer.

This turned out to be a surprisingly rich moment in the discussion--not just because participants zeroed in on the ways in which poetry allows them to think and behave in ways that regular life does not--e.g., wildly, with abandon--but also because it is so hard for people to simply bask for a moment in the pleasures of their art. Immediately dissatisfaction creeps in: I should, I wish, I struggle. People feel they should be different sorts of poets, with different sorts of subjects. They suffer over imperfection. This is, of course, quite natural. And yet sometimes the dissatisfactions overwhelm our ability to rest productively within our own creations. Why write, if we don't take the time to love our own work?

 

For some reason the construction guys did not show up yesterday, so we had another day of unexpected peace in the neighborhood. And it was sunny and 60 degrees and the garden was in a very good mood. Here are the garden boxes in the Lane: lettuce, arugula, and radishes; spinach and garlic. 

Forget-me-nots self-sowed in the back yard, and some of them are white, which was unexpected.

This is an early viburnum, loaded with pink buds that open into sweet-scented white clusters. I am delighted with this shrub. In its first year in place, it's doubled in size and covered with blossoms.

Today I'll be focusing on prep for tonight's class, and editing, and vacuuming, and probably running some errands. I've been thinking of starting a memoir essay, but I don't know if I'm quite prepared for prose immersion. It's been a while since I've done much essay writing, other than what I blather on about here. So much of my essay writing tends to dig out how my reading brain works, and I'd like to shift away from that into a new venture. But I'm not exactly sure what the venture might be.

I'm glad I got so much done outside over the weekend, as I'm sure the heavy equipment is going start appearing on the street at any moment. Yesterday, before my class, I planted cabbage and cauliflower, ran the trimmer, baked bread, rode my bike, and afterward I was able to linger outside with my laundry basket, harvesting salad and herbs and generally pretending that I wasn't about to be driven mad by excavators.

Today, editing and housework and groceries; prep for tomorrow evening's class and Thursday evening's lecture. I'm still reading Lee's bio of Woolf, though I may quit after the childhood years. Sometimes, with a life, I feel most drawn to the time before a writer was a writer. What was it like to be the child Keats, the child Dickens? What was it like to be their parents, their brothers, their place, their time?

 

Evening light in the kitchen, after a long day outside.

I planted dahlias, beans, chard, and fennel. I bought sage and tarragon seedlings as well as a gorgeous yellow baptisia. I set tomato stakes, and mowed grass, and deadheaded blooms, and filled the hummingbird feeder, so this morning all I'll need to do is run the trimmer and I'll be caught up outside.

But first: bread baking.

I've got to cram my chores into the morning because I'll be teaching all afternoon. Plus, tomorrow the terrible street construction starts in earnest, and working outside will be unpleasant. I am trying not to be grouchy that roadwork is messing with my very favorite season in the garden. Functional water lines are important. I keep reminding myself of that.

I've started rereading Hermione Lee's bio of Virginia Woolf, as well as John Webster's seventeenth-century play The Duchess of Malfi, which I found on the street. I've been working on a poem draft, working on my lecture for next Thursday's event, fretting to the optometrist about my exhausted eyes. Yes, I need a new prescription, and now eye drops too, and maybe special expensive computer glasses which I really don't want to pay for, and I feel as if my eyes are rotting in my head. To think I used to be known for my big blue eyes. Now all I want to do is squinch them shut.

The cat and I both slept in till 6:15, a major feat for us as a team. So I woke in the magnificent bed with sunlight pouring through the east window, the window itself open, the blind gently clacking in a small wind, a cardinal's song lilting, a train rumbling past.

I've been working hard to make this a day that I spend mostly outside. I managed to catch up with desk and housework, so I'll be going seedling shopping this morning and I'll put the plants in the ground in the afternoon. I need to mow and trim and weed and deadhead tulips and hyacinths. I'll hang out the laundry and, if the temperature lets me, I'll eat lunch in the sunshine. What with all of the weekday street construction, spending a bright quiet Saturday in the yard feels urgent.

By the way: I am cordially inviting you to the book launch for Accidental Hymn, on Wednesday, May 25, 7 p.m. ET, on Zoom. The invitation link is above, in the page tabs, and also includes a link to ordering the book. I was trying to figure out the easiest way to make those sources available without constantly reprinting them, and I hope this method works.

 Good morning!

At long last my next collection, Accidental Hymn, is available for ordering! Shortly I'll also be able to share with you a zoom invitation to the book launch, on Wednesday, May 25, 7 p.m. ET. I'll be reading from the book and will also be in conversation with Teresa Carson about it.

Next week, I'll be part of a different sort of event--Found in the Archives: Stories of Buried Treasure, sponsored by the University of New England. I'll be talking about my diary-poem manuscript, which came into being thanks to a diary archived at UNE's Maine Women Writers Collection: Thursday, May 12, 6 p.m. ET. If you're interested in the notion of creative research, you might want to check it out.

And thus, today, I'll be futzing over my talk, worrying about marketing the book, getting my eyes dilated at the optometrist's, and engaging in other such unnatural activities . . . though thankfully yesterday I did transform a poem blurt into a first draft, and I did spend the evening writing with friends, and I did go for a bike ride and work in the garden.

Road construction has taken a small hiatus in order for the water guys to hook up our lines to the alternate source. So it's even been sort of quiet outside. I'm dreading next week. "Ledge," one water guy told me. "There could be ledge." An ominous prediction.

Outside, in the near dark, a cardinal is singing and singing. He knows a good day is coming . . . sun after rain, warmth after chill. I am so looking forward to it. 

This has been a cold spring. It's May, but the temperature has rarely gotten out of the low 50s. The garden is beautiful but refrigerated. I'm not complaining: we've had plenty of rain, and not much frost. But there's been no lingering in chairs or hammock, no meals by the fire pit. 

Today, though, we're supposed to see 65, and I am eager for that soft air. Everything is soaking wet, so I probably won't do much gardening. And I can't forget that the place will be overrun with street construction. Still, windows open; a hour in a garden chair with a book . . .

Mostly, though, I'll be at my desk: editing, working on that lecture. I think I'll go out to my writing salon tonight. I think I'll go for a bike ride this morning. My body is eager for action, and my mind feels flibberty, in that poem-need way. Funny how those things so often go together.

We're supposed to have rain all day, which is just fine with me. Everything is so dusty from the roadwork, and I look forward to watching the new leaves shift and shine though my wet windowpanes.

I'll be editing, and working on a syllabus for Sunday's class, and starting to write a lecture for the event I'm doing next week for the Maine Women Writers Center. I need to grocery-shop and wash sheets. I'd like to transcribe some pre-poems out of my notebook. I ought to do some submissions.

Yesterday I went for a beautiful, early-morning bike ride through the neighborhood and cemetery, but I won't do that today as my rained-on glasses would immediately blind me. Still, I might walk: a spring drenching is hard to resist, especially with a steaming cup of tea and a wood fire to follow.

For some reason my thoughts are a bit scattered this morning. I woke up hard from a solid sleep, so maybe that's the reason. But now that I'm awake, I'm able to be glad to have finished my weekly housework, to have made my way through the first class of a new session, to be home without prospect of travel any time soon. I'm ready to settle down, ready for a rainy day and books and a roast chicken in the oven. 

By the way: yesterday afternoon I made the best rhubarb pie I have ever baked. Delicious, a beautiful slicer, not one bit soggy. My friend Weslea loaded me down with stalks from her seaside plants, and my own new rhubarb plant added a few of its own to the mix, and, gosh, I wish you'd been here to taste the result.

 . . . and the road construction has started again. Yesterday all of the irrigation pipes reappeared, young men were hoicking out chunks of pavement, dust was flying, noise noise noise. They say another two weeks of this while they replace the waterlines they were supposed to replace last fall when they redid the sewer connections. In short: planting season is going to be on the miserable side.

But oh well. Better than failing waterlines.

I'll be teaching on Tuesday evenings for the next six weeks: another chapbook class, but this one massaged into a different format for the needs of this particular crew. So today I need to figure out my before-n-after dinner prep: something ready to put on the table after I finish zooming, which I can prepare completely before I start zooming. I haven't come up with any ideas yet, but I'll get there.

Otherwise: finishing housework, finishing laundry, editing, prepping for a Sunday-afternoon class. We got some welcome rain last night, so later this morning I'll wander outside and see how the plants are doing. I'd like to go for a bike ride today. I'd like to make an apple-rhubarb pie. I would not like to endure road construction, but that is also what I'll be doing.

We got home late afternoon, much to the cat's joy and loud complaint. The flower gardens look beautiful: tulips everywhere, the quince beginning to bloom, carpets of violets. Today I will give everything a good watering, in between catching up with desk obligations and getting my hair cut and doing my exercise class and addressing the laundry pile and the housework. Tomorrow evening my next chapbook class begins: six Tuesday evenings covering what I usually distribute over three Sunday afternoons. So the classes will have familiar content but a new rhythm, and I need to spend time today figuring that out.

Our visit to Mount Desert Island was a respite, a real delight, and we are already planning a return in late October, when the cottage is uninhabited again. It's a dear place, much loved for many years, but our move to Portland has made it a bit harder to reach. Still, we can figure out how to get back more often. It seems important.

The roots we put down: I go up north to my friends' house in Wellington and I am embraced by the pines and firs of the homeland, though I am not on land that ever belonged to me. I go downeast to West Tremont and I step into a shabby fairy-tale volume: a little cottage by the sea, with its familiar windows and mugs and plates and crooked stairs, its wandering fields of forsythia and raspberries. I go west to Franconia, and there Robert Frost's musty little farmhouse waits, with its front porch staring into the mountains, its stars as bright as cities. None of these place are mine, but they all live in me.

These are views of the trail and shore at Indian Point, a Nature Conservancy property that we hiked into yesterday afternoon. Somehow we managed not to step onto any Acadia trails while we were here . . . and that is hard to do on this island.

Usually, on our visits, we are gung-ho about climbing a mountain, seeing a view. But for some reason both of us--not at all sick, not notably exhausted--have been almost convalescent in our lack of get-up-and-go. Yes, we walked several miles, and I did an exercise class with my friend, and today we are going to help her with yard work. But we didn't "accomplish a peak"; we didn't even want to. We wanted to be mild, and take giant naps, and potter around at the edge of the sea.

Right now I am sitting in a comfortable shabby chair and drinking coffee and looking into the sunshine over Goose Cove. The tide is out, and the mudflats are littered with seaweed and boulders. In the distance is Swan's Island. The blue water is speckled with gulls. The blue sky is streaked lightly with white. This has been a sweet and elegiac visit to a place we've known for decades, a history-cavern of children and dog and long friendship, always a respite and a peace in our lives. A place that has never belonged to us, yet has dearly belonged to us.