I spent a chunk of yesterday's desk time on poem revision, and now, after weeks without writing a poem, I have two dense new drafts to preoccupy me. Neither is a "nice" poem; both are difficult and ambiguous. But they interest me: in their ugliness; in how they lurch down the page, and quick-switch their focus, and stretch their tentacles into fury and comic madness and loss of control.

Today I'll go back to editing, but the drafts are waiting for me: they exist. And tonight I'll go out to the salon to write, and maybe more poem-chicks will start tapping at their shells.

It's looking as if our street construction may finally be finished. The pavers have come and gone. The gravel piles and orange cones have disappeared. Only the port-a-potty lingers. I said to my neighbor  yesterday that I feel we should have had an end-of-project party: a chance to hang out on the street and drink beers with the construction guys and the neighbors and the water-district supervisor and admire the work and re-live the big moments ("Remember when you nicked the sewer line? Oh, that was an afternoon!). But, alas, we've lost our chance.

Still, there's much to be said for bird song, and no dust, and usable driveways, and no irrigation pipes running through my garden, so I will not regret the might-have-beens.