This was the scene yesterday morning, as Tom pondered the rafter project and Ruckus flopped officiously on the paving stones. The cat loves construction, and exhausted himself with much administrative attention to the scene. At the end of the day he came inside without complaint and went to bed early.

And here is a late-day photo with the rafters up. Behind the shed you can see our neighbors' garage, which is not exactly parallel to the shed, meaning that from some angles an optical illusion makes the shed looks crooked, though T is a leveling master. He is somewhat put out about this.

Today he'll shear off the front peak and put on the galvanized roof. I suspect that will take most of the day: I don't know what will come next: possibly cutting a new door frame that doesn't thwack tall homeowners in the forehead. T still needs to buy siding, so covering up the Christmas colors is a ways off.

Today I'll clean the house, which I normally don't do on the days that Tom is home-carpentering, but I've got a busy week ahead and need to get the chores out of my hair. Yesterday I did a bunch of weeding, made a batch of pesto for the freezer, bottled up some dried herbs, and prepped new bundles of fresh for drying. I also made a cake that turned out to be a bust because I forgot a main ingredient: ugh. I hate when I do stupid things like that.

Late yesterday afternoon I agreed to step in as visiting faculty at the Frost Place Poetry Seminar next week, doing a reading on Monday night and a craft talk on Friday morning in place of someone who's ill. Naturally this is a bit head-spinning as I have to quickly come up with an hour-and-a-half craft talk I hadn't planned on giving, but I think I can massage my upcoming generative workshop into more of a discussion-based situation.

So I enter the weekend, after a pretty slow week, suddenly feeling breathless. My work life can be strange.

However, today is the day that T rips off the shed roof, and that means I cannot primarily be sketching out craft talks. I expect I'll be out there helping him empty the shed, sort through stuff, haul it into piles, etc. The poetry will have to percolate quietly on its own.

Yesterday I picked our first couple of tomatoes and fried our first eggplant. The late summer garden is stepping into its power. I'd like to find some time to weed today, in and around my shed duties. I have to start the watering chore again. I've started reading The Perpetual Curate, written by a mid-Victorian novelist I've spent almost no time with: Mrs. Oliphant. I'm also reading Natalie Diaz's Postcolonial Love Poem and Sue Scavo's Buried [A Place]. I've been whipping through Sunday NYT crossword puzzles like they're elementary-school word searches. I don't know what's going on with my brain, but it is stuffed full of words. Probably a shed day will be good for it.

You may find this difficult to believe, but we actually got half an inch of rain last night--not nearly enough to end the drought but so much more than we've had for weeks. I am itching to get outside and see how the plants are feeling this morning.

With thunderstorms imminent, T couldn't work on the shed after work, so he finished stacking the firewood in the basement, and now I have that good warm "ready for winter" feeling that is one of the allures of homesteading . . . the pleasure of new hay in the barn, canned tomatoes on the shelf, firewood stacked for the stove. I am glad that living in town hasn't deleted all of my farm satisfactions.

Otherwise, I diddled around with tedious things such as "re-up the car registration" and "sign up with a different oil company" and "cancel the old oil contract" and "take the bottles to the returnables shack." It's amazing how many hours such stuff consumes.

But I'll be back to my desk today, working on some permissions issues for a friend, beginning a small copyediting project, and possibly starting prep for a craft class, in case I have to fill in for a sick teacher.

Which reminds me: I've been meaning to get you up to speed on a few teaching items:

My upcoming 2-session class for the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, "Sheltering in Place: Writing Poems from Where You Are," has ONE space left. I'd love it if you'd grab it.

I've scheduled another round of "Learning from Nina Simone: An Introductory Chapbook Seminar." This is strictly limited to 6 participants and is already starting to fill. If you're beginning to think about putting together a manuscript, this is a chance to try out a variety of approaches and to build a collegial circle of peers who know and care about your work.

The Frost Place Studio Sessions has inaugurated a new program we're calling the Teachers' Round Table, short, inexpensive sessions with seasoned teachers who share their expertise in using poetry in the classroom and other public settings. The first is "The Path of Poetry: Words and Practices to Carry Us through Challenging Times," led by Ian Ramsey, which is open to anyone who wants to learn to use poetry as self-care for themselves, their students, their clients, etc. The second is "Teaching with Poetry Out Loud: Building a Community in Your Classroom," with Holly Smith, which offers tips on using the Poetry Out Loud program creatively with students. 

Greetings from the sunflowers, nodding over the sidewalk. Despite being dug up and moved twice this summer (thanks to the street construction), they are eight feet tall and thriving.

Here's a blurry photo of leeks, chard, and fennel, doing their best to fatten through drought and groundhog plague.

And here is T building the woodshed wall. You can see how the roofline will change.

I planted these climbing beans just before July 4 and already their tendrils are taller than my head.

The cucumber is dry but doughty, and this year's crop is exceedingly tender and sweet. 

Zinnias and calendula frolic at the feet to the sunflowers. I don't know why these pictures are all so soft-focus. I'm not very good at cameras.

Wednesday morning, 60 degrees. The coolness is delicious. All of the house windows are open, and the air is very still; even the birds are quiet. A vague scent of brine floats up from the cove. 

The small editing project seems to be on hold, so I spent yesterday morning at work on a syllabus and then, in the afternoon, switched over to poems. I went for a bike ride and made chocolate pudding. And then, late in the day, I happily watched T build the new back wall of the woodshed. Progress is being made! It is quite thrilling, and I will try to remember to take some photos for you.

Today I may plot out a few Frost Place offerings for 2023. I'll struggle through my exercise session in the morning, and work on some poems, and hang laundry, and water the garden, and run to the grocery store, and call the furnace guy, and maybe the editing project will finally drop into my lap and I'll do that too.

In other words, as you are surmising, things are pretty slow around here. The torpor of summer seems to have overtaken my employment prospects, and I am kicking a can through the hours, muddling with this and that until the desk tray fills up again. 

Finally, the heat seems to have broken. But of course we got no rain yesterday, just the rumble of someone else's thunder. The drought goes on and on. It has been weeks since we've had a real downpour, let alone a slow soaker.

Still, I'm managing to keep the vegetable garden alive. Beans and cucumbers and peppers are thriving. The last of the blueberries are ripening. Tomatoes and eggplant are fattening. I'm overrun with basil and cilantro. The late-season crops--kale, leeks, carrots--are maturing. And the high-summer flowers are in their glory: dahlias, sunflowers, zinnias, calendula, coneflowers, bachelor's buttons. They are a distraction from the dead brown grass.

Yesterday I finished up an editing project. I cleaned floors; I stacked some firewood; I read a few pages of Eliot's Four Quartets and several stories in Best American Short Stories 2010.  I blackened salmon, and boiled potatoes, and made a huge salad of green beans and caramelized peppers. T came home with bags of concrete and spent his evening securing the footer of the new woodshed. Tonight he might start framing.

For my part, I'm starting a new editing job and working on some class planning and messing around with poem drafts and maybe submitting a few things. It's possible that the air will be un-humid enough for me to ride my bike this morning. Of course I'll have to water, and hang laundry.

                                   Other echoes

Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?

Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,

Round the corner.

                         --from T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton," in The Four Quartets

78 degrees at 5 a.m., but the air feels sweet, despite the thickness. I've got the machine turned off and the windows open, and now katydid squeak is seeping into my quiet room. It's Monday, the last week of July, in this little northern city by the sea, and a cardinal is singing in my neighbor's hedge, and a small breeze is lifting the sunflower leaves.

All hot weekend long T toiled at the shed, scraping a trench into the root-packed soil, leveling block for a foundation, and now we have the footprint of the new woodshed, and a stack of new materials in the back yard, and a stack of crappy junk in the backyard, and it looks like construction, and I am excited. So is the cat, who could hardly tear himself away from the job. He spent hours flopped in the shade, watching Tom labor. That cat is a born administrator.

My plan today is to finish up my big editing project and then start a new small one. I did quite a bit of housework while T was digging, but I've still got the floors to clean: I have learned from long experience not to wash floors while a carpenter is on the job. There's a cord of wood to stack in the basement, and poems to fiddle with on my desk, and T. S. Eliot to read for my conversation with Teresa. I've started to explore Best American Short Stories 2010, which I found on the street, along with the a lovely old edition of the poetry of Wilfred Owen.

I'll endure my exercise class and make ice tea and wash clothes and run the trimmer and cook local salmon for dinner, and hold my head and pray for rain, as Bob Dylan puts it so succinctly. Every recent storm has skipped us. Maybe today we'll get lucky, finally.

At 6 a.m. it's a balmy 68 degrees in the little city by the sea, so I've turned off the air machine and opened the windows, and now shafts of sun and the Sunday-morning chatter of crows are filtering through the screens. The heat will pick up soon, and I'll have to shut everything down again, but for the moment summer has returned to sweetness.

Now I'm drinking coffee, listening to towels churn in the washer, trying to hoick myself off this couch and into my tedious watering duties. Yesterday morning I cut out wheelbarrow loads of past-their-prime perennials . . . dry sweet peas, bee balm, spurge, salvia. I thinned and transplanted cabbages, and dead-headed calendula and zinnias and dahlias and cosmos. Meanwhile, T worked on his shed project: digging out the detritus that had accumulated around the sills, scraping out a trench and nailing down a hardware-cloth barrier to keep animals from slipping underneath (no more skunks, please). Hot work on a hot day.

Today I think he'll be pondering footers for the woodshed addition, and maybe he'll start framing that section, or maybe he's got some other plan. My jobs will mostly be grocery shopping and housework. I did work on a poem draft yesterday, and I've got another blurt or two to start transcribing and revising. The work keeps pouring out. I feel more like a conduit than a poet.

I'm sitting here drinking my coffee and trying to whip up enthusiasm for jumping into garden chores at 6 a.m. There's another hot day on the horizon, and I've got a lot of work to do outside--cutting down perennials past their prime, dead-heading flowers, thinning and weeding--before the heat becomes unbearable. Early morning is my window, and I'd better learn to like it.

T may be out there with me. His project is moving firewood from the outside stack into the basement . . . because, yes, it's true, it's really true: he's getting ready to start renovating the shed. I am very excited. No more terrible red eyesore shack! Instead, a snug little urban barn, silver-roofed and sided with cedar, with a teeny sliding door and bright little windows and a cunning little woodshed. The cuteness may kill me.

I forget if I told you that tonight I'll be reading on zoom, in virtual New Jersey, for the Poets of the Palisades Series: 7:30 p.m. ET, alongside the poet Gary Metras. There's an open mic, too, so bring your own poems to share.

And shed a tear with me for those hangdog Red Sox, who lost 28-5 last night, and deserved to. The boys are having a bad, bad summer. 

Another hot day on the way, but not a drop of rain yesterday, I'm sorry to report. So this morning, again, I'll be watering and watering, doing my best to prevent this poor little plot from crisping into chips.

Last night I went out to the writing salon, and every prompt seemed to click into my pen and drive it down the page. "You are on fire!" marveled my friend Betsy, and I was embarrassed because I feel more like a perpetual faucet drip, but whatever the metaphor the fact is that I am back in the zone and I don't know why or how but the stuff keeps coming: call it tinder or call it a flood, but as you see I can hardly even slap end punctuation on a sentence.

Today maybe I'll get a chance to look at some of my poem-draft blurt, or maybe not. I've got a bunch of footnotes to deal with in my editing project, and then a bunch of Frost Place things to do, plus all of that watering, etc., so whatever poem work gets done will be ice cream at the end of a long afternoon.

"Do you maybe get where you're going because you hear those voices in your head?" asked Betsy. The answer is yes. Poet or crazy person: how can I tell the difference? It's possible I'm turning into my granny, which would be an interesting outcome. Worry if you see me smoking Luckies and wearing tattered house dresses over Liz Taylor-style slips and reducing my diet to a perpetual drip of saltines and weak coffee and shaking my skinny fist at the gods.

Last night T and I ate dinner at Chaval. We took an Uber there and afterward strolled home through the summer night--about a two-mile walk through the West End, down the hill into Bayside, along Deering Oaks Park, then over the highway into the Deering neighborhoods: first, Oakdale and across Woodfords Corner and finally into our own Deering Center hamlet. I like the names of the neighborhoods. I like the way the houses change and the trees change and the traffic changes. The hour was dusk and the sidewalks were busy downtown, filled with summer dresses and strollers and people buying frozen pizzas at the gas station and people putting out their trash for tomorrow and overtired toddlers crying hysterically; then thinning out as we radiated away from the city center, so that by the time we'd almost reached home only the dogs and the dog walkers were idling with us.

It was a warm night, a good night, summer in her glory, and we wore our summer finery, and the construction cranes and the ancient oak trees reached their arms into the sky, and the triple-decker apartment buildings looked like a child's Lego village, and dogs on their dog walks did not want to go home but tugged obstinately at their leashes and flumped down hard on the sidewalks.

* * *

Today will be a little less hot, I think, but with thunderstorms and humidity, so I may still end up with the air conditioner on. For the moment, however, the windows are open and the machine is silenced. You must think it's funny how much time I've given over to A/C discussion this week, but it's a novelty to me: a significant physical relief (so much easier to concentrate on work, such a good sleep I had last night) but also a separation from the world, which I dislike. I think I had not realized how much I love summer as an encroachment into house-space . . . open windows, birdsong, children's quarrels, the slams of car doors, the barking of dogs, the spray of hoses, the kick of a soccer ball: these are the sounds of Deering Center, so different from and similar to the sounds of Harmony . . . wind in the firs, bleating goats, chainsaws, log trucks, the cry of a barred owl, the squeak of a fox, the shriek of a power drill, the quarrels of my own children, the barking of my own dog . . . Winter draws us into our private circle. Summer opens us into the communal one.

Today is our 31st wedding anniversary, though we've been a pair for about 35 years. We met at age 19, got together at 21, married at 26, had babies at 29 and 33 . . . and now here we are, 57 years old, still listening to 70s funk together, still quarreling over cribbage supremacy, still eating cold shrimp on a hot night.

Despite our many years together, yesterday was the first night we ever spent air-conditioned in our own home. And I was glad to have it. The temperature hit 90 yesterday and will be nearly as hot today. Still, for the moment I've turned off the machine. I missed the open windows, the sounds of the gulls and the passersby. Being cool requires being in a bubble, and I get enough of that isolation during the winter. One of the reasons I love summer is because it softens the barrier between inside and out. Still, there's much to be said for not melting into a puddle by 10 a.m.

Like yesterday, today will be schizophrenic. I'll be exercising and editing and writing in my machine-cooled room. I'll also be outside in the sticky heat hanging laundry and watering the gardens. Tonight T and I will go out to dinner, at a place on the West End we've only been to once before but that we remember with delight. All things considered, we are mostly pretty happy together. All things considered, I am pretty lucky.

We did get rain last night, a good soaking, but already, at 5 a.m., the steam is rising and the heat is ramping up. Today will be a scorcher, and I'm pretty sure the A/C will have its first all-day trial run. Lots of ice tea on the menu. Shrimp salad for dinner. But first, illogical as it seems, the chimney sweep will be arriving. Of course he needs to come when we're not using the woodstove. However, soot plus 90 degrees does seem unfortunate for him.

Otherwise, this will be a typical day: editing, reading, working on poems, trying to stay cool. At least the garden got some water relief yesterday, and I finished the housework. There should be no need to rush around hotly.

And I'm pleased with these new poem drafts . . . one in particular. It's strange and mysterious and I like not knowing just what's going on.

We're supposed to get rain today, and I sure hope that's true. Only my willpower is keeping the garden and new shrubs alive, and my willpower is getting very, very tired of the water bill.

I had a long day on the road yesterday . . . driving up and then down Route 1, through midcoast towns I've rarely set foot in---Newcastle, Bath, Nobleboro--though I have devoured the oysters they grow . . . along knuckles of land, across fingers of tidal rivers, clogging up stoplights amid the vacationers streaming up and down the coast, crossing bridges I was afraid to cross but crossed anyway . . . and then a reading, my first inside, in person, for years, and a lovely crowd and a lovely, lovely setting by the sea, and I even signed books, and that alone felt so bizarre . . .

And now, Monday morning in the Alcott House. Sticky and overcast. Tom upstairs yawning loudly and bumping dresser drawers. Me, thinking about housework and grocery shopping, editing and phone calls, what needs to get done what needs to get done, the little sing-song chorus of Monday morning.

I've got two poem drafts in progress, and I hope to fidget with them in the fringes of my utilitarian day. I hope to cook red beans and rice. I hope to stand at a window watching the rain pour down. 

Today was not a good sleep-in day, as Ruckus made up for yesterday's pleasant behavior by starting to yowl at 3 a.m. In any case, I had to get up at 5 to take a friend to the airport, so as a result I am writing to you in a bleary, coffee-free state. Expect typos and snide remarks about cats.

At least the coffee situation is on the way to being rectified, and shortly I'll settle into some sort of detente with morning. In a few hours I'll head downeast to my reading . . . it's a two-hour drive each way, and I'm not thrilled to have slept so badly, but oh well. At least I won't melt into a puddle while also being exhausted. And the view off the coast will be lovely.

Yesterday T announced that he is considering his next handyman project: rebuilding our shed, which is close to collapse. Even when new, it was a Home Depot piece of junk, and now it is a rotting piece of junk, and the roof is likely to fall in under the snow. So he spent a few hours cogitating and measuring and drawing, and has now designed a beautiful little renovation, with a new roofline, windows, cedar siding, and an enclosed woodshed addition. I hope we can figure out how to afford this, and I hope it can get done before the next load of firewood arrives, and I can't wait to see the cute little woodshed, with its sliding door.

Good morning from a poet who slept in till 6:30, abetted by the full participation and strangely good cheer of her normally antsy cat. I have no idea why Ruckus decided to be pleasant about this, but he graciously wallowed, and a good time was had by all.

Now I am drinking coffee and listening to laundry churn in the machine. Already the heat is kicking in, another summer day on the way, peppers and green beans and blueberries to pick, the endless watering chore, cat flopped on the cool paving stones, cold beer in the fridge and a cribbage game under the trees.

Tomorrow I've got to drive to a reading on the midcoast, about an hour and half downeast from Portland, and already I am highly appreciative of the new car A/C that will keep me from metamorphosing into a sweat hog.

So today I need to figure out what I'll be reading, and no doubt I'll dither around with various other tasks: cutting herbs for drying, packing away the herbs that are already dry, that sort of thing. I might start reading the next tome that Teresa and I are tackling together: T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. I might hand-wash some winter sweaters. I might convince T that we should abandon work altogether and go out and do something fun instead. He will not be hard to convince.

I went out to the salon last night and wrote at least one pre-draft that might have potential, and I'm looking forward to stealing a few hours to mess around with it some more. The new editing project is moving along very quickly, so I can allow myself a dab of writing leisure today, in and among the other desk tasks. 

It's only 59 degrees this morning, but the humidity is kicking up, and I think we've got a hot and sticky day ahead of us. I haven't turned on the air conditioner for weeks, but the time is coming. Last night we had a small thundershower, and for the moment the garden looks steamy and self-satisfied, though soon the sun will burn away the veil of moisture and we'll return to parched deep-summer. I still haven't found a single summer mushroom--not a chanterelle, not a puffball. The dryness runs deep.

I've been reading about baseball in 1964, I've been puttering among words, I've been listening to birdsong and the hiss of locusts. I've been writing run-on sentences and collecting dirty towels into a basket and wondering what to cook for dinner. Portland is presently chockfull of state governors and I'm hoping not to run into DeSantis or Noem on the street. The visions dance behind my eyes and I call them dreams and I cannot remember them when I wake up in the morning. It is parched deep-summer and the small rains trickle into dust and dry grass and my bare legs are scratched and bug-bitten and my bare feet are dirty and this could be the story of 1972 and I could be seven years old.

Sorry for the somewhat late post: our internet has been down for several hours and is now wonkily attempting to reassert itself. So you may or may not receive this letter. We'll see what the electro god decrees.

The neighborhood got a speck of rain early this morning, not enough to wet much more than the cat, though he managed to get himself soaked. So I suppose I'll be out with the hose this morning, after my bike ride. Watering is a boring chore, and an expensive one, but my shrubs are too young to weather a drought, and the vegetables need constant moisture.

Otherwise, I'll be at my desk today, wrestling with my new stack of editing, working on Frost Place stuff around the edges; and tonight I'll go out to the salon to write. 

I feel a little dull, nothing new or scintillating to report . . . just the same summer round: garden and desk, garden and desk. T and I have talked about taking a weekend together in Boston, but neither of us has done anything about planning that, so who knows. I put gas in my car yesterday and realized I hadn't filled the tank since I was in Vermont at the beginning of June. That is how no-place I've been. My drive up to the Thomaston reading on Sunday will be a real novelty.

On the other hand, I am good at staying home, so this is not a complaint.

This morning, in the humid dark, two young raccoons bustled over the back fence and across the yard. The sight reminded me that yesterday I saw a mockingbird harass a red-tailed hawk (no doubt with the goal of distracting it from a nest), chasing it, diving at it, and all the while scolding it in blue jay patois.

Midsummer and the animals are busy, busy, all on their appointed shifts, dusk till dawn, dawn till dusk, eat and be eaten, destinies overlapping along the edges that circle daylight.

I was supposed to go out last night to a baseball game with friends, but a sudden sharp thunderstorm at game time changed all plans. Instead, I stayed home and watched the rain and made an unplanned macaroni salad from various this-and-thats. Though the rain was inconvenient for baseball, it was a delight in every other way, and now, in the a.m. gloaming, the cardinals are singing, the raccoon teens are cruising, the maples are dripping, and the warm air smells of wet soil, wet pavement, wet leaves.

The new editing project finally arrived, so I'll be back to steady work today. But in the gap I got a lot done on class planning and assorted paperwork, plus managed to shoehorn in household stuff like ordering firewood and scheduling the chimney sweep and buying more flea medicine for the cat . . . the kind of list my brain does not like to remember to check off.

I'm reading about baseball in the 1960s, I'm reading stacks of individual poems in search of teaching inspiration, I'm not yet reading the copy of Eliot's The Four Quartets that arrived in the mail, I'm whipping through NYT Sunday crossword puzzles, I'm fumbling my way into Vivaldi's "Spring," I'm not writing because my brain is exhausted from writing, I'm picking the first cucumbers. That is the story.

Last night's poetry group was sweet . . . just four of us sitting in my living room, as the sun went down and a small breeze floated through the open windows. I was happy to have flowers on the mantle, happy to be thinking about other people's words.

I spent a chunk of the morning working on my upcoming August zoom class, "Sheltering in Place." I believe there's still room in it, if you feel like joining us. I'm going to focus on readings and generative prompts centering around immediate engagement with self and world. We'll have two three-hour afternoons, and each will have three themes. I haven't quite worked out the order, but the themes will likely be "time of day," "state of mind," "time of life," "acquaintance with the body," "acquaintance with the spirit," and "time of year." If you hate zoom, do not worry. There will be lots and lots of off-screen writing time.

I'll spend more time with that this morning, and probably work on Frost Place stuff as well. I'm still waiting for the new editing project to drop, and tonight I'm supposed to go to a baseball game, though there's a chance of thunderstorms, so we'll see. I'm the last person to complain about the possibility of rain, but there's truly nothing fun about sitting in an open stadium during a storm.

Otherwise, fighting the groundhog, riding my bike, watering the gardens, washing the clothes, reading and writing . . . welcome to my summer life in gerunds.

One thing has become clear: the groundhog does not care for onions. So yesterday I finally gave up on my mutilated cabbage crop and filled that area with transplanted leeks. If I get nothing else from this garden, I will at least have a nice fall crop. As you can see from the photo, even with an extra bed, I still did not have room for all of the beauties, so I thinned them out and stuck them in water till I could get around to cleaning them up for the refrigerator. As it turns out, they make a striking if odd bouquet, with their wild hair streaming all over the counter.

My new big poem, "The First of July," is out at Vox Populi this morning. Some of you, who were in the Writing Intensive with me, may have seen an early version of the piece, but among other many changes I radically edited the middle section so that it now has a very different pivot.

Turns out that my dear friend and mentor, Baron Wormser, is also a featured writer today at VP. You should read his essay "Ghosts."

Update: there's an error in my posted poem that I hope will be corrected by the time you read it. The final section, "9 p.m.," was missing on the initial posting, so check back for it if it's still not there.

And now fixed!

Saturday turned out to be a lazy one. I did garden and I did do some minimal housework, but mostly I sat around finishing Evan Connell's Mr. Bridge and starting Muriel Spark's Reality and Dreams. Tom went for a bike ride and brought home scallops for ceviche. Then we decided to walk up to the meat market and buy some flank steak for a Sunday cookout. We drank a beer and played cards. We listened to records. We watched a movie. We talked to our son. I chased the groundhog out of the yard. It was a friendly, idling sort of day, except for the groundhogging. I do not feel at all friendly toward the groundhog.

Today I've got to grocery-shop and clean bathrooms. I'd like to sit down with a couple of poetry collections. I need to water the garden and clean out some dresser drawers. I'm happy to have these couple of slow, puttering days because this will be a busy week: in addition to working, I'll be hosting our poetry workshop group tomorrow evening, then going to a baseball game with another group of poets on Tuesday. Probably I'll write with the salon on Thursday, and next weekend I'll be driving up the midcoast for a reading in Thomaston. Who knew poets were so sociable? In Harmony I had no idea.

Somewhere, not far, away a bird spins out a slow, down-twisting melody, and then again, and then again. It is early morning, on a summer Saturday, in the little northern city by the sea. Downstairs a load of laundry churns. Upstairs T is still asleep, and I sit alone in the dusky living room, as coolness filters through the screens, as my thoughts collect and scatter.

Around me, signs of life: books, a music stand, a cup, a box of garden seeds, a violin in its case. And now the bird has stopped spiraling through its slow song, and a chickadee takes over the air waves, dee-dee-dee, dee-dee-dee, sensible and matter-of-fact.

Inside and out, summer spools its bright thread.

I've got the usual things to do today, garden and house, desk and chair. The groundhog is a problem I am struggling to solve. No book reviews is a problem I am struggling to solve. I've been told that one is forthcoming, but other than that, who knows? Same old story. I try not to be downhearted but it is hard.

Still, I finished a big poem this week. The work goes on.

I went out last night to the salon and did not write well there, which was interesting, considering how intensely I've been writing at home. Still, it was good to get out and see people, and to listen to other poets who were writing better drafts than I was. I even enjoyed the small drive across town, from my own leafy neighborhood, through downtown crowds, into the narrow streets of the West End. I realized that I've hardly driven anywhere for weeks, just one boring trip to Target and some grocery shopping. I've been a Zoom hermit, also a regular hermit, emerging only to hang laundry and pull weeds and bike crazily around the cemetery in search of mushrooms.

In the meantime the big poem has found a publisher, so I need to step aside from it for a while, let it stretch its legs away from me. I wonder what I might work on next. I feel a little lonely without it. 

Currently the cat is wandering from door to door, meowing to be let in . . . except that he's meowing through a dead mouse clamped between his jaws. It's amazing how much noise he can make with a rodent in his mouth, and he's extremely annoyed with me for refusing to allow him to bring his mouse inside, so the meowing is high-pitched and vigorous. I imagine all of the neighbors are craning against their windows to see what's wrong with him. He can be a very embarrassing pet. But he is a very good mouser.

I spent yesterday morning working on Frost Place things, which also involved reorganizing computer files, a tedious job that I finally found time to do. In the midst of this I had a rush of inspiration about a problem with the long poem I've been working so hard on, and I radically rewrote an entire section. That was an unexpected flash; who anticipates that inspiration will strike while filing?

Later in the day I harvested a big dishpan full of basil and made pesto for the freezer, then cut a bouquet of sage for drying. I went for two walks, in hopes of finding mushrooms after yesterday's rain, but had no luck at all. Mushroom foraging is terrible this summer. The only thing I've found is a single tiny dried-up chanterelle, too dirty and insect-bitten to save. 

Around the edges I'm reading Austen's Pride and Prejudice with a friend who's never read it before, and I'm reading Evan S. Connell's Mrs. Bridge, which I've read many times and which continues to be heartbreaking. I don't know of a better book about the insidiously sad and desperate world of midcentury American suburban housewives.

All night long the rain poured down onto the gardens and roofs and streets, and I woke and slept, woke and slept to its hiss and clatter. This morning everything smells of wet. The trees are dripping with water, the soil is sponged with water, the stones glint with water. 

T got home last night, cheerful and chattery, loaded down with a suitcase of Mexican hot sauces and a phone full of silly cat photos. I think he and J had a really good time together, ripping out bathroom walls, tearing down paneling, getting sweaty and filthy and cogitating about floor plans.

But he's glad to be home, and I am glad to have him home, and now we are sliding back into our usual ways. Suddenly the laundry basket is full again, suddenly the coffee pot is empty again, suddenly I am thinking about bread for his work sandwiches and do we have enough mustard and I need to remember to write such and such on the list and what's that weird smell . . . and so go the daily frets of the housekeeper. 

For a few days, though, I was a full-time poet. And I got a lot done. I got so much done. And now I hold my poem in my hands and it is alive and glowing.

 . . . and thus the haze of a happy weekend is dispelled by an automatic weapon in the hands of a cruel and stupid young white man. Of course it is. We live in America.

* * *

I spent yesterday slowly coming out from under my spell. I did write, but clearly the magic was dispersing and my brain was weary. I listened to baseball and played a few bars of the Mendelssohn violin concerto. I hand-washed winter hats and scarves and hung them on the line. I weeded among the shrubs in the back yard. I read a Margaret Drabble novel and finished a crossword puzzle. I made buckwheat pancakes for dinner.

* * *

At night I lay in my bed and listened to the city fireworks along the bay, the pop of firecrackers in the streets. Or perhaps I was listening to murder. I don't know how to tell the difference.

I planted calendula often in the Harmony garden, but this is the first year I've put it into the Portland one. Though the flowers are easy enough to grow by seed, I impulsively bought a flat of seedlings around the time when my father got sick and I was trying to quickly fill beds before I left for Vermont for untold weeks. Generally I grow calendula as a salad flower, but this time I was focused on the sidewalk bed, where I plant annuals to create a summer hedge, ones that stand up to sidewalk dirt and dogs. Of course, road construction upended my plans, and soon I had to dig up the little plants and heel them in elsewhere for weeks, and then replant them in the so-called loam that the guys used to fill the holes.

But the calendula has weathered magnificently. It is a plain little plant: fat buttons of color--orange, yellow, or cream--with thick bright foliage and a bustling eagerness to grow. I'm starting to think of it as my mascot flower: simple, happy, and sweet. Not that I am reliably any of those things myself, but I can dream.

Yesterday I did manage to get the housework done, so that task is comfortably behind me for a week. I am now surrounded by clean floors and clean bathrooms, and I have an unplanned day ahead. My new poem is six pages long, and I think it is mostly finished, though no doubt I'll be tinkering with it all day long, and tinkering with the garden all day long, weeding and staking and pruning one or the other.

This long weekend has been such a gift.

 The rain never materialized and we are dry, dry. I am watering twice a day now, fretting over the little shrubs whose roots compete against the sucking reach of the imperial maples.

Still, this is summer, this is classic July, this is the long weekend that pivots us into the heart of our brief northern flame.

Yesterday I made only the faintest dab at housework . . . laundry, meals, dishes. Mostly what I did was garden and write. Maybe today will be another such. The housework will get done eventually, but staying in this universe feels urgent. Garden and poems tangle into the same task. I am home, and surrounded by cares, but my mind is in a Coleridge state (minus the laudanum) . . . 

What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in your hand
Ah, what then?

 

I slept in a bit, till 5:30, and woke up sprawled on my back among the sheets, with the fan whirring and the cat staring balefully into my face. 

No rain yet, but the gray air is thick and the skies are glowering.

Here I am, on a sticky Saturday morning, with a full pot of coffee and only me to drink it.

I am waiting for rain, but not waiting for anything else. I have no plans but I have many occupations.

I write poems and I garden. Two new drafts yesterday, four revisions, chard and fennel thinned and weeded, grass mowed, peas picked, vases filled with sweet peas and calendula.

In the garden, and in my poems, everything feels out of hand . . . growing too fast, exploding in too many directions.

After street construction tore up my sidewalk beds, I thought I should give up on on the calendula. But the calendula did not agree.

Just before dark moved in, I watched a female ruby-throat buzz among the bee balm. They look like circus clowns, these flowers, but the hummer adores them. I should invent an adage: "Three clowns in a garden are a hummingbird in love."

The path to the tomatoes; and a glimpse of my neighbor's house, which is much cuter than mine; but this is a lesson for poets and gardeners: You've got to use your stuff, even if your stuff is a questionably renovated 1940s cape plopped onto a vacant lot between the 1890s and the 1920s.

The famous sweet pea, which has appeared in poems all day, riots cozily over a stair railing. She is lurid yet homey, a cottage-garden regular wrapped in a burlesque dancer's boa. I have been trying to write poems like sweet peas all day long.

 Day 6. We wrote and we thought and we listened and we read and we wrote. And then the day was over, and the laptop screens snapped shut, and I wandered outside into the afternoon, up the streets of the afternoon, I stepped into the quiet market, I picked up a box of eggs, I picked up a frozen pizza, I bought these things, I smiled at the man who sold me these things, and then I wandered back into the streets, down through blaze and shade, past young people and U-Haul vans, past old people and old dogs, past a stack of free books, where I chose Harold Pinter's The Proust Screenplay for myself, past fading roses and yellow lilies, past forgotten construction cones stacked like party hats, and I came around the corner into my own small corner, the shaggy grass, the calendula blooming bravely in the sun's heat, and I walked up my own stoop and unlocked the door and then there I stood, in my kitchen, blue and white and cool, in its north-facing quiet.