This is the yellow rosebush that P and I picked out together during High Covid, when every little sweetness felt so extremely vital. Now, this week, it is blooming in the Hill Country, alongside the white rugosa and the crimson climber, the shattering peonies, the swelling peas, the carrots that used to stand ferny and brave, before the groundhog bit off their fronds. The beauty of June can be almost too much to bear.

I got my hair cut yesterday, bought salmon and haddock at the fish market, finished editing an academic journal, did some Frost Place stuff, worked on a poem, weeded the Shed Patch, made lime-scented ice cream, listened to the Red Sox pound the A's. It was one of those days when I felt how much I love to be home: when home itself becomes the scaffolding for figuring out how to live. The place absorbs me into tasks, and the tasks bring me into concert with my frayed selves. Because I weed and wash clothes and tidy the kitchen and cut lettuce, I also read the biography of Virginia Woolf and revise a poem.

Today I'll hang sheets on the line and I'll plan a class on Marvell, and both of these jobs are important to me. One is not better than the other. The sheets sing wind; the poem is green, is dense with sap and blossom.