A little warmer this morning, but still cool enough for the furnace to grind on. Monday, Halloween, and I barely managed to remember to buy candy yesterday. I was thinking about P's birthday and the opening day of deer season, and Halloween nearly slipped my mind.

We had a busy day yesterday. Tom painted the first coat of stain onto the shed, and I putzed around with housework, put the outdoor chairs in the basement for the winter, baked bread, grocery-shopped, installed a new toilet seat, and so on and so on. The shed isn't finished yet, but the woodshed addition is ready for occupancy, just in time for the green firewood delivery this morning, and later today I'll have the fun of inaugurating it. The day promises to be bright and temperate--a perfect day for wood work--and stacking should go quickly in the new digs.

I've finished reading Already Dead and am idling through a New Yorker article before picking up another book. I need to clean floors. I need to get started on class plans for next week. I also need to allow myself to take a rest. I haven't had a full weekend off since I had Covid.

FYI, my December chapbook class, "Learning from Nina Simone," is now half full, so if you're thinking of signing up, you should probably do so soon. Participation is strictly limited to 6 people so that everyone's manuscript will get lots of attention.

Next Thursday, I'll be reading in the Visiting Writers Series at Warren Community College in Washington, New Jersey. If you're in the area, I'd love to see you there.

Sunday, 5:15 a.m., 34 degrees, outside air dark and sharp. I woke up too early for a weekend day off, but at least it's an unscheduled too-early: I can loll here in my couch corner as long as I like.

Yesterday's workshop seemed to go well, and in the afternoon I puttered outside in the sunshine, finishing up with the debris pile, sorting through random firewood scraps, and otherwise neatening the slop corner behind the shed. A homestead needs a slop corner, someplace to stash the compost bins and the leaf pile, but I feel city eyes always on me, as if I'm responsible for the view from other people's windows. I should probably stop thinking that way, but with so many houses pressed up against mine, in every direction, it's hard to ignore the fishbowl.

I talked with both of my boys yesterday, read a lot, ambled up to the store in the evening to buy beer. Today I've got to grocery-shop and do some housework but otherwise am hoping to meander. This coming week will be filled with going-away prep. Firewood delivery on Monday morning; the rest of the week, wood stacking, class planning, reading planning, travel planning, my friend Betsy's book launch on Thursday night--a swirl of thinking-ahead, thinking-ahead.

At least I seem to have survived my latest grief attack. My legs feel steadier underneath me, my mind less plaintive.

It's a cold morning, 33 degrees--still not quite a frost, but we're getting close. The furnace hums and burbles; the cat leaps back into the house as if his paws are on fire; fresh hot coffee tastes like the best of all possible drinks.

I did pull myself into shape yesterday, mostly by doing hours of yard work . . . sorting out and bagging a pile of roots and sticks mixed with soil and ancient trash and shed detritus, which had been accumulating in the ditch beside the shed for years before we arrived. It was a dirty ugly mess, unpleasant to untangle and satisfying to delete. I rolled up hoses and stored them in the shed, and I raked leaves against the shrubs and into the flowerbeds, first round of several more mulching sessions as the enormous maples slowly shed their loads.

I came inside with blisters on my hands and dirt caked under my nails, and a much lighter heart.

This morning I'll be leading a revision workshop, but afterward I'll head outside to finish the ugly-detritus job. We've got a load of green firewood arriving on Monday morning, so I want to get space cleaned out and ready for wood moving. With our new woodshed we now have a neat and efficient pipeline arrangement: this year's dry wood in the basement, next year's green wood in the covered shed, no more snow-wet, tarp-flapping outdoor stacks, though we'll still have to move the burnable stack into the house each year. My Wellington friends have a beautiful arrangement right outside the back door--dry wood on one side, green wood on the other, a covered walkway for the wood mover--but this is our city compromise.

I'm still reading Denis Johnson's Already Dead. I'm working on poem revisions and even some submissions. I've finished an editing project, and timing-wise this small hiatus is really helpful, as the craze of my November schedule is looming. Starting next Friday I'll be on the road for a week, bouncing from Portland to Mount Desert Island to Monson to Portland to New York to New Jersey to New York to Portland. Already I'm wondering how I'm ever going to get my laundry done. 

I'm not going to waste energy fretting about that yet, however. Today: teach and then dig. Leftover pot roast for dinner. A baseball game afterward (go, Phillies!). A long night's sleep in my own bed.

I had kind of a bad day yesterday. I don't know why, but this last trip up north dropped me very suddenly back into my old grief state. I talked to P about it; he suspects the culprit is time of year, which is possible. This is a strange, remote, sadly beautiful season in my homeland, and today is also P's 25th birthday, which triggers elegy in its own right. He says he's been feeling it himself, in New York: the stab of loss.

As I drove past my Harmony house on Tuesday afternoon I could see that the new owner had been cutting trees. I keep wondering if that's what's made me so sad, but I don't think it really is. Many of those trees would have had to go if we'd still been there: too massive, too old, too close to the house. More, it was something about the sky, the rain . . . the fourth-dimensional leaps of time . . . I don't know. None of this makes sense. But sense isn't the point.

Anyway, I tried to go easy on myself yesterday. I took a long walk through the neighborhood, treading through the gusty sunshine, swirls of leaves pattering and whispering as they fell. I wandered through Baxter Woods, up into Evergreen Cemetery, concentrating on being alive in that moment, and I was, and I do feel better today. I don't want to regress into grief. It was not good for me, for my writing, for T, for the boys, for anything. I had to pass through it, but I don't want to reignite it.

Today I'll work outside in my tiny patch of land. I'll rake leaves. I'll bag up roots and twigs. I'll roll up hoses for the winter. I'll break away from the old sickness. It's what has to be done, what will be done.

Home again, and glad to be here. Yesterday's drive was exhausting: drenching rain all the way, terrible visibility on the highway, hours of brake lights and truck splash, plus my tire-pressure light clicked on, which was assuredly nothing, but dashboard warnings always ramp my anxiety. Anyway, I made it home by about 4 p.m., got dinner underway, lit a small fire to chase away the damp, and lay on the couch with a book, all of which improved my state of mind.

My class itself was magnificent, as usual. I love, love, love these kids: so smart, so sassy and opinionated, but also so eager to try new things. And talk! How they love to talk!

The homeland, too, was its usual irresistible self. Most of the remaining leaves have darkened to copper. The tamaracks are golden now, and the air is filled with rain and random gunshots, for deer season opens next weekend and everyone, hunter or not, is getting ready. From the shore of the glassy lake a friend points out the beaver lodge that grows larger by the day. In Wellington we eat steak and wild mushrooms and garden romaine and listen to raindrops clattering slowly onto the metal roof. The house is an island in a forest sea. 

It's been good for me to be back north this season, despite the draining travel. When I'm there, something shifts inside, something returns to itself. I don't know what to call this something, but whatever it is, I don't have it in Portland. I think it is linked to empty stretches of road, to the small circle of sky above the deep forest, to the devotions of my oldest friends, to deep loneliness and extravagant everyday beauty, to the customary travails of survival, to the individualities of time.

I am accustomed to the city now; I enjoy it, even thrive in it. But I have a home that is not my homeland, and a homeland where I have no home. That's just the way it is.

That's just the way it is.

Outside, the misty darkness drips and drizzles. The temperature is mild--57 degrees--so no furnace grumble this morning, just the low echo of a train passing by. I woke up from a weird dream about making sausage in a nightclub (let's not even begin to Freudianize that one), and now I am sitting with my coffee and beginning to imagine my day. Eventually I'll head north to Harmony, meet a friend for a walk, mosey over to Wellington for the night, drive from there to Monson for Wednesday's class, but for the moment I'm still ensconced in my Alcott House nest, curled against the new couch pillows as the shadows of early morning slowly stretch and and thin into daylight.

I finished the Muriel Spark novel and have started reading Denis Johnson's Already Dead, which I may or may not have read before. It's set in northern California in 1990, and like most novels in that setting involves fast driving on curvy roads, illicit pot farms, exhausted hippies, unsavory surfers, ruthless landowners, fascistic police, addled iconoclasts, etc. I can't tell yet if I'm simply reliving the tropes of some other novel or if, in the faraway past, I actually experienced this one. In any case, Johnson's prose, as always, is poetic, and that lushness intersects oddly with the jagged hairpins of plot. I appreciate the strangeness of the collision.

I began another revision yesterday, so I am juggling two poems in process now. I hope to give the drafts some time this morning, before I have to pull myself together for travel. Now that I am in the midst of this crazy fall schedule, every little hole feels deep. It's funny how too-much and emptiness can co-exist.

It's been raining lightly all night, and is forecast to keep this up for the next several days. Though I got most of my bulbs planted yesterday before work, I've still got a big batch of anemone corms to dig in, so I expect I'll be out in the wet today, getting that done.

Tomorrow I'll head north for class on Wednesday, and I'd like to cross planting off my list before I leave, along with various other this-n-thats. Yesterday was the final session in the chapbook seminar, but next Saturday I'll be leading a revision workshop, meaning that my off-days, such as they are, continue to be sprinkled oddly around the edges. This week's so-called off-days will likely involve editing and Frost Place stuff, but also housework and groceries, none of which is exactly off. As always, the line between work and not-work is blurry at best.

But the Phillies are going to the World Series, which pleases me, and rain is falling kindly (for a change), which also pleases me. The house is snug, and I slept well, and I'm planning to make split-pea soup for dinner. If I can find the space, I'll work on poem revisions. Monday morning, darkness and rain; lamplight, the scent of toast, the tick of a clock; books and flowers and an empty cup. Two long-acquainted people not speaking but atmospherically friendly, like fat clouds bumping up against each other in a blue sky-room. 

 

Sunday morning, the tail end of October in the little northern city by the sea. At this hour the living room of the Alcott House feels like a burrow, a winter den--crowded and warm, turned in on itself. I haven't lit a fire this morning, but last night's heat lingers, and outside, beyond the tight-shut windows, the murmur of traffic could be wind, could be ocean.

I spent yesterday morning in the flowerbeds, the afternoon shopping. I am an unenthusiastic shopper, but am sometimes driven to it . . . in this case by a dearth of presentable work clothes and a sudden urge to make our living room less grey. New throw pillows: the cheap coverup for shabby furniture. And I'm just now remembering that I dreamed there was a giant hole carved into the wall. Apparently decorator anxiety is getting me down.

I'll be teaching this afternoon, so this morning I'll putter through some house stuff: move firewood, clean bathrooms, figure out something or other for dinner later--probably involving leftovers from the leg of lamb I roasted last night.

For the moment, though, I'm wallowing in Sunday morning--the treat of two cups of coffee instead of one; no rush to get laundry into the machine or the kitchen cleaned up after Tom's flurried breakfast. Here I sit, cozily tucked up against a new throw pillow, thinking about the Muriel Spark novel I just started reading (her first, The Comforters, from 1957), thinking about the poem revision I'm working on, feeling pleased that the Phillies beat the Padres in last night's playoff game, fretting slightly about the logistics of today's class but in a harmless, non-angsty way, happy to have the garden cleanup under control, suddenly remembering that I have a lot of flower bulbs to plant this week, wondering if maybe I should do some of that this morning, worrying a little over the dying tree that needs to come down . . . What a pedestrian mind I have! Always bumbling around among the potatoes instead of soaring into the firmament. 

It's Saturday and I slept late, just as I'd hoped to. I do get tired of the 5 a.m. grind, but waking up too early is a hard habit to break. 6:30 is a much more reasonable hour. And now here I sit, in my accustomed corner of the grey couch, in my accustomed red bathrobe, admiring my accustomed cup of coffee in its white cup and saucer, and imagining the plain ordinary Saturday rolling out before me . . . house chores, garden chores, Tom working on the shed, the cat stalking back and forth between us, the blue October sky blossoming like a field of forget-me-nots.

Last night I finished Suite Francaise, which was heartbreaking, and now I'm not sure what to read next; my reading mind feels very tender and bruised, and I want to handle it kindly. I guess I will start by reading the New Yorker article about the new production of Death of a Salesman, which I'm probably going to see when I'm in New York in November. Maybe that will slide me gently toward a next book.

Last night I also tried out two new recipes: a farro risotto with dried chanterelles and diced chicken, which had a lovely creamy-chewy texture; and pumpkin-buttermilk pudding with brandy hard sauce, which was light and flavorful and not overburdened by cloying pumpkin sweetness. Even Tom loved it, and he is not a giant fan of standard winter-squash dishes. (My version of the pudding used what I had in the house--a buttercup squash and yogurt instead of pumpkin and buttermilk--and it turned out beautifully.) 

I also managed to submit a few more poems. As I was going through possibilities, I realized that I have sizable stack of new work, much of it arising from prompts at the Thursday salon and in Frost Place classes. There are also a few expansions of drafts I've scribbled during high school classes. It used to be that I never wrote while teaching; I was too busy circling the room, being attentive about student focus, etc. I'm glad I've finally figured out (20 years later) how to offer prompts that allow us all to work together.

* * *

By the way, here's our hip new chair--

Friday morning, 6 a.m., 40 degrees outside, furnace grumbling, coffee hot, cat racing wildly around the house.

I'm sleepy, and trying to convince myself to get off the couch and start gathering together the recycling and trash for the curb. Tom is upstairs clonking drawers open and shut. The darkness is still thick, and the dawdling urge is powerful.

Yesterday was another this-n-that day: garden cleanup, a walk with friends, Monson class planning, writing in the evening. I copied out some poems by the Abenaki poet Cheryl Savageau, which I'm going to share with the kids, alongside some Michael Casey pieces, as we spend next Wednesday playing with various approaches to voice. And I worked on my own revision, which is improving but still doesn't thrill me.

I continue to wait for editing work back from an author, so today will be another unfocused day, employment-wise. I might run some errands; I'll keep hacking away at the garden; I'll mess around with my revision and maybe some of the blurts I wrote last night at the salon. I'll read Suite Francaise and endure my exercise class and clean the ashes out of the grate. Maybe I'll send a few more poems out to journals.

This week's loose days were unexpected, but I'm happy to have them, though I don't feel as if I've been especially productive. But what does productive mean, anyhow? I did some things and noticed that I was doing them. Maybe that's productive enough.

A chilly morning, 38 degrees, and the furnace is rumbling. I haven't turned it on much this fall. The nights have been mild enough, and the wood stove powerful enough, to keep us heated. But that's a temporary condition. Winter is around the corner, and I've already woken up with nightmares about Christmas shopping.

We haven't had a frost yet, but the garden is very tired, and the recent rains took the vim out of most of the remaining flowers. So yesterday I dug up dahlia roots, tore out the scarlet runner, cut down the peony, and prepped the Lantern Waste bed for winter.

I did revise a poem, and I'll spend more time with it today. I don't love it yet but maybe I'll learn to. I also managed to convince myself to submit to a couple of journals, and packed dried herbs into jars, and made chicken stock for the freezer, and had a long phone conversation with a son about playwriting. All in all, it was an interesting, non-money-earning day.

So today, while I'm waiting for editing files from an author, I'll tackle the Parlor and Library beds and work a little more on my wood-sawing project. I'll put together a syllabus for next week's Monson class. I'll peck away at the poem revision and read another chunk of Suite Francaise. I might copy out some Dante. Possibly I might get the violin out of its case or go mushroom hunting. I'm hoping to visit with some central-Maine-diaspora friends. I'll probably go out to the salon to write tonight.

Mid-October, in the little northern city by the sea: newly bare branches framing a white steeple; flutter-flocks of migrating songbirds; honey mushrooms hidden under the backyard leaves; golden marigolds blooming among the leeks; children scuffling home from school; the cat blinking luxuriously in an afternoon sunny spot; a wood fire lit by late afternoon; low, slanting daylight; socks and jackets and work gloves; the sky a glorious cerulean blue; the sky invisible under fog.

It is sweet here, and mostly I think of it as home.

Things seem to have settled down, both weather- and emergency-wise, though I could still use some more sleep. I keep waking up at 3 and then falling into a doze 45 minutes before the alarm goes off at 5:30, which is an unsatisfying way to enter a day. But at least I'm no longer panicking about having to make a sudden midnight drive to Vermont.

Now that the yard has dried off after the storm, I hope to get outside to clean up flowerbeds, rake leaves, and saw up the last windfall branch. First, though, I've got to finish up my editing stack, prep for a meeting, deal with a pile of emails, etc. Last night I roasted a chicken, so at some point I'll gather together the various stock ingredients and simmer them for soup.

I've been reading Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise, written during the German occupation of France in World War II. Nemirovsky was Jewish and died in a concentration camp, and her children later found the novel's manuscript among her papers. I have never read a book quite like it: one written during a period of great panic and upheaval, on the subject of that panic and upheaval, but with an elegiac tone as if it were written 20 years after the fact. This tonal disconnect is startling and extremely moving.

But it's also hard to take in, so I am reading very slowly, in small bursts. It's interesting how reading patterns vary: sometimes I'm so voracious; sometimes I just nibble at the edges.

Rain has been pouring and crashing all night, and now water is trickling into the basement, little rivers snaking across the concrete floor like leaks in a boat hull. 

At least the roof is holding.

I slept badly, woken in the middle of the night by a family-emergency text; and though everything seems to have shaken out okay, I've still got that metallic anxiety taste in my mouth. 

But this cup of coffee is soothing, the sound of the rain is soothing, I'll step over the rivers when I go down to the basement, the day will advance, I will deal with it.

Today I might finish going through the editing stack on my desk. I should grocery-shop. I could submit poems to journals. Last night I cooked up a bowl of foraged honey mushrooms for orecchiette; I could go out into the wet and look for more.

Maybe this day will settle down.

* * *

FYI, my upcoming reading with Meg Kearney and Catherine Parnell, originally scheduled for October 26, has been rescheduled for November 30, 7 p.m. ET, via zoom.

Yesterday morning, after everyone else had left for the ferry, I did manage to get the backyard mess picked up, all storm-trashed twigs and small branches broken up and bagged, though I still have a bit more fat branch to cut into stove-length pieces. I use an arborist's handsaw to slice up these large boughs, and the chore always reminds me of the hours I spent splitting wood in Harmony: the precise physical pleasure of woodwork on a cool fall morning. I don't know if I could still swing an ax, but at least I can run a sharp handsaw through green maple.

So I entered into my zoom afternoon feeling strong and buzzy and accomplished, as wood chores do make a person feel, and then after class I watched the Bills-Chiefs game, which is always a hair-raising matchup, and eventually T's parents came around from their motel and we all walked out to dinner.

This morning the household will slide back into regular life. I'll be editing someone's manuscript, Tom will be renovating someone's kitchen, Ruckus will be mousing among the cracks of the stone wall and snoring in the blue chair. The weather, which was sparkly and warm all weekend, will retreat to fog and cloud and drizzle. I've got a batch of honey mushrooms (harvested from neighborhood backyards) to clean and process for the freezer. And I'd like to work on poems, but we'll see what Time says about that.

 Tom's parents are visiting for the weekend and we are having a very good time together. Yesterday's weather was sweet and mild, and we started off the morning downtown at the Maine Historical Society, which has an excellent exhibit of Mainers' 19th- and 20th-century clothing. (I also found a book in the gift shop, Dawnland: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England, which includes a number of pieces that I can use with my Monson students as they write about Maine and place and loss.) Then we ambled a few doors down to Flea-for-All, a big vintage market with midcentury used furniture and plenty of small oddities. T found a living room chair he liked, and his parents bought it for us as an early Christmas gift, and I can't wait till we get it home next week to replace one of our horrible worn-out thrift store chairs. It will be thrilling to have a decent seat.

Midday we drove out to the lobster shack in Cape Elizabeth. As we sat outside in the mild sunshine, cracking lobster and sucked up lobster rolls, we had a panoramic view of enormous, crashing waves, leftovers from yesterday's storm. The setting was pretty spectacular. Then we worked off lunch by trudging along the cliff walk in Fort Williams, peering into the remnants of the WWII batteries and staring out to sea at the sailboats struggling against the wild waves.

By late afternoon we wended our way back to the Alcott House, played cards, ate yesterday's leftovers as mussel chowder, and yawned. It was a fresh-sea-air kind of day, and sleep came fast.

Today the three of them will take the ferry over to Peaks Island, and I will stay home and teach a class and meet up with them afterward. I might also try to deal with the giant broken tree branch in the backyard, if I can find the tree saw in the mess inside the shed-under-construction. So far this weekend has been nonstop play, and doing something useful will be a novelty.

We had a crazy storm yesterday--huge winds, torrential rains, branches down everywhere, including a big leaf-laden bough that whirled out of one of our backyard maples and shattered over the fire pit. 

Portland got close to two inches of rain, and this morning the yard is stunned and sodden. My pink dahlias are smashed face-first into the sidewalk, and everywhere stairs and streets are laminated with a slick of wet leaves. The storm feels like a message from the future: maybe, "the world is not in your control," or "never forget winter," or possibly "finish that damn shed."

Still, my in-laws somehow managed to get into town with a minimum of trouble, and we spent a lovely evening chattering and eating and playing cards. Today we'll probably go looking for lobster, or amble into shops, or wander along beaches, or otherwise entertain ourselves in some kind of low-key way. And then eventually we'll come back to the house and I'll figure something or other for dinner, probably a quick mussel chowder with the leftovers from Friday's steamed mussel feast.

In the meantime, I'm wallowing in a pleasant late start to the morning. I've got a lot of laundry to deal with, and I ought to go outside and check on the giant busted branch that's draped over half the backyard. I'll get to it eventually. For now, I'm gazing at the jar of zinnias I wisely picked before the storm smashed the flowerbeds, I'm watching the watery morning light weave its way among the golds and greens and reds that glow outside every window. The house feels very sweet this morning, a little boat moored, tidy and shabby, and not quite watertight.

Wild weather all night in the little northern city by the sea: windswept rain clattering against the panes and the steady, low howl of an ocean gale. Now the rain has paused, but the howl continues and the downpour will return, huffing and rattling, and I will dodge wetly from car to market, in search of mussels for tonight's dinner with my in-laws, and I will stumble into the wind as I drag the recycling to the curb, and my in-laws will have an annoying drive north.

Today, I'll mostly be doing housework and dinner prep. I'm planning to make mussels meunière, garlic bread, a beet and marigold salad, and, for dessert, ginger-pear ice cream with rosemary shortbread . . . a seaside autumn meal. I'm glad I managed to get outside things done yesterday: cutting zinnias for vases, lugging in the enormous bloom-heavy begonia that thrived in the backyard all summer. Now the house is bright and cozy, if also shabby, and I hope it will be welcoming after a long day in the rain.

I went out last night to write, and might have scrawled a couple of blurts worth looking at again. I doubt I'll have time to do so today, but maybe. Anyway, it feels good to have them tucked into my notebook, waiting for me.

On another note: I want to remind you that I've got two Frost Place classes coming up:

* In December, another round of my intro chapbook seminar, "Learning from Nina Simone," open to anyone who is beginning to think about how to group poems.

* In February, a generative writing weekend, "Poet as Storyteller: Exploring the Power of Narrative," where we'll be experimenting with ways to use the tools of fiction within our poems. This is open to anyone, at any level of experience, who wants to read and talk and write.

Yesterday I started and finished a little editing project, worked on a poem, made sauce with the last of the house-ripened tomatoes, finally planted my garlic, did a bit of raking, hung clothes on the basement lines, answered emails, brought in firewood, reorganized some drawers, and otherwise trickled my way through a list of small chores and obligations. It was pleasant to have time to sort through these minor tasks, to be mostly off the clock but also busy.

Because I have to work both a weekday and a weekend schedule, and because so much of my work happens from home, and because all of it involves reading and writing, I find it hard to figure out how to separate my private tasks (whatever they are) from my contractual ones. Revising a poem is unpaid and personal, but it directly affects my teaching and performance life. Digging in the garden and folding laundry and cooking a meal are household tasks that do not ostensibly involve writing, but they are the subject matter and rhythm of my days, and thus show up in my poems, and thus affect my teaching and performance . . . and you can see how this tangle perpetuates.

Not that I am complaining. I'm extremely fortunate to be juggling this life, but juggle is an operative word. 

At 7:30 a.m. it was 28 degrees on the gravel road between Wellington and Kingsbury Plantation, and the trees and the sky were brilliant. I didn't have time to get out of the car but I was able to take these photos quickly.

This second one is looking over the dam on Kingsbury Pond, where the mist is rising softly, and the water seems to lap at the heels of the mountains, and frost coats the roadside grasses.

It was, as you can see, an intense morning in the homeland. My drive to Monson, which cut through dirt roads and logging routes, was a blast of color. And my teaching day was also a blast of color. These kids I'm working with: they are something else. Our focus yesterday was on Sappho, and they were in love. They all got to choose a card with a Sappho fragment on it as their writing trigger, and by the end of the afternoon they were clutching those fragments like talismans. I thought maybe my heart might break, to see them folding those little cards away in their notebooks so tenderly.

And then I drove home, winding my way south through the wild tree lanes. It is hard to explain how emotional I feel, listening to a young person work their way into new thoughts, new sounds, new connections. I needed all of that two-and-a-half-hour drive home to settle myself into some more manageable state of mind.

Today I'll catch up on some bits and pieces of desk work and yard work. I need to make sauce with the last of the tomatoes. I need to mow grass and I still need to plant garlic. Tom foraged some really nice drawer organizers from a kitchen demo, so I want to clean them up and then put them to use in our own kitchen. I'll do my exercise class and walk up to the market and fiddle with some poem drafts. 

I'm still kind of giddy from yesterday's class. I really don't know how I would ever manage as a day-to-day teacher. I seem to take everything too hard.

My work week started yesterday, with an afternoon zoom class, and today, after lunch, I head north for tomorrow's Monson Arts class. So the morning will be filled with housework and grocery shopping, in an attempt to avoid returning home to a foodless mess.

We still haven't had a frost in Portland, and I still haven't planted my garlic. I need to find time to do that this week, in and among my desk and teaching obligations. And we've got company arriving on Friday, so I'll need to make decent stab at shining things up around here. That is difficult to do when the yard is a construction site.

I hope some of you are having a day off. That is not the case here in the Alcott House, where work slaps us around like it does on every other Monday. But we did have our lovely Saturday outing, so I'm not complaining. And Wellington and Monson will be glorious in their autumn robes.

My teaching day will focus on expansion and contraction--beginning with a fragment and swelling out to the universe; then taking the fat group draft we wrote in the last session and reducing it to a fragment. I made a stack of cards, each with a Sappho line written on it, so we'll play with those as our starters. Here's hoping my idea works. Every class is like a science experiment. Something's bound to fizzle or explode.

T and I spent most of yesterday at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm Farm, an estuarine research center sited on a 19th-century farm along the salt marshes of the southern Maine seacoast. It's about a 40-minute drive from Portland, and is a favorite spot of mine, with trails rambling through fields and forest, marsh and beach. Yesterday we spotted a kingfisher with a fish in its beak and a harbor seal bobbing adorably among the breakers along the beach shore, round-eyed and sleek-headed, no doubt hunting clams or flounder.

The tide was going out, and the beach was striped with snakes of erosion. The lurid brilliance of sky, sea, and trees made me feel a little addled, in a good way.

This was where we saw the seal, though I didn't get a photo. But she was quite close to shore.

The marsh grasses are eight or nine feet high, and walking among them is like being in a secret garden.

The human condition expressed in birch-tree vandalism: "I'm so happy sad."

 A trail through the fields toward the marshes. The variety of landscape is notable in such a small area.

* * *

I'm back to work today, teaching this afternoon, bustling through class prep and housework this morning. But my two-day birthday vacation has been lovely, and I am full of pep and good feelings. 

My birthday weekend began sweetly yesterday, with little gifts from my parents, and phone calls and texts from beloveds, and then to make everything better Tom came home from work halfway through the morning, all of his assigned tasks done and a bouquet of flowers in his hand. So I slowly made a cake, and listened to some playoff baseball, and watched the latest episode of Bake-Off, and reread Millbank, and later we went for a walk, and later I cooked salmon and potatoes and sliced up tomatoes for a salad, and we had a friendly, slow evening to top off a friendly, slow day.

Today our birthday vacation continues. We'd originally thought Tom would be working all day on Friday, so had made our outing plans for Saturday. As a result, we've ended up with two days to play. This morning we're going to pick up smoked-fish sandwiches at Rose Foods and then drive down to Laudholm Farm, a bird sanctuary in Wells, where we can walk among the saltmarshes and along the beach, eat our sandwiches on a rock, and watch the water and the grasses and the trees and the animals. We'll come home and take naps; we'll light a fire in the fire pit and grill steaks. Two peaceful holidays, and then Sunday I'm back to teaching, Monday I drive north, Tuesday I'm in class with kids all day . . . 

I feel a little bit guilty because I was invited to sign books at the Maine Literary Festival's book fair today, and probably, if I were a good self-promoter, I would have, but in truth I just couldn't bear the thought. I am so tired of working six or seven days a week.

And thus, today, saltwater and sunlight.

 This morning I woke up and I was 58 years old. 

I love my birthday, I always love my birthday, but this year I feel a little tongue-tied about it. I never complain about my age; I'm just so glad to be alive. Still, sometimes I am in the mood for a retrospective, and that is not how I'm feeling this morning. I could emote about turning 60 in two years, I could recall childhood birthday anxieties about being spanked, I could say something elegiac about autumn. Maybe I'll do some or all of that before this post ends, but for the moment I don't feel the urge to do much more than be.

There is a stack of little wrapped gifts in the dining room, sent by my mother. There are bright cards on the mantle. 

My day will be quiet. I finished the editing project, so will do some class prep and then plant garlic, maybe go to the plant nursery to look at flower bulbs, definitely buy ingredients to make a lemon layer cake with mascarpone frosting.

I want a day when I am flotsam and jetsam, quietly bumping up against this and that. I want a day when working for other people isn't my primary activity.

I will listen to a little playoff baseball and mix up my cake. I will dig in the dirt. I will read a book and drink tea. I will fiddle with some poems. I will let the day be itself.

There was no rain in yesterday's forecast. Nonetheless, it rained all day, a slow unproductive drizzle that dampened sidewalks and curled hair but made no impression on the soil. Somehow I ended up going for two walks in this weather--once to fetch stew beef and mushrooms from the meat market, and then again before dark, when the stew was in the oven and the baseball game was languishing in those mid-innings doldrums and I was itching for something to do. So Tom and I walked out into the wet dusk, among the orange-leafed maples, among the lichen-patched gravestones. And then we returned and listened to the final plays of a bad baseball season, and waited for Joe Castiglione to read his closing prayer, as he always does at the end of the last Red Sox game, always these words from Bart Giammati's Take Time for Paradise--

[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

Click goes my phone, and I know it is a son, texting. "It always makes me teary," he taps. Because he, too, so many miles away from me, has been waiting for these words. They are the gate to winter.

Today I hope to finish up this editing project. I need to plan for next week's Monson class, and for Sunday's chapbook class. I need to plant garlic. I'll probably go out to write tonight. This has been a good week, steady and slow, with space for everything. 

And tomorrow is my birthday, another gate.

Yesterday turned out to be the day I've been dreaming of for weeks. I finished not one but two chapters of the editing project, I worked on not one but three new poem drafts. I tore out all of the bean plants, brought a load of firewood into the house, went for a long walk, devoured a novel, organized Frost Place stuff, made chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner, and went to bed feeling like myself.

These are the titles of my poem drafts:

"Self-Portrait as Memorandum"

"The Last Days of the Shift"

"Poem with a Soundtrack and a Villain"

I mean, three decent poems in one day! That in itself would have been miraculous. But I was useful too. Amazing.

Maybe today will be another open-sesame. I can only hope.

The furnace gently grumbles. My coffee cup steams on the table. The woodbox is half full of dry sticks, bits and pieces to burn up on a semi-cool evening. A pie pumpkin from Angela's garden sits on the mantle among the birthday cards. In the kitchen, dishes overflow with half-ripened tomatoes, and the refrigerator is full of carrots and beets. In the back room bouquets of herbs, flowers, and grasses hang from the antlers. There's no doubt: this must be the first week of October.

Yesterday went just as I expected it would, which is a plus (no Covid, no vet). I finished the housework, did the marketing, worked at my desk, worked in the garden. I made minestrone and berry cobbler for dinner. I listened to the ragtag tail of the Red Sox season. I sat by the fire and devoured a Kenneth Roberts novel about campaigning up the Kennebec River in the 1770s. I played cribbage and I fell asleep beside an open window.

This is a fairly unscheduled week for me. Though I have lots of work to do, in lots of different arenas, I'll mostly be dealing with it at home, and I'm appreciating that ease. I like wandering into my study to edit, then down into the kitchen to start bread, down to the clotheslines in the cellar, outside with a cup of tea to perch on the front stoop, then back again to my desk. I do my best thinking in this patchy way, and I'm relieved that the Covid fog has lifted and I am back inside my own rattly head.

 I am happy to report that I drove to my reading and back, and arrived at home close to 6 p.m. feeling full of vim, so that when Tom said he he'd been siding the shed all afternoon and hadn't even thought about dinner, I was able to respond perkily, "Do not worry! I will figure something out!" and then I did, and I was not dragging or grumpy or tired but chattered about the reading and seeing old friends, and after a while Tom asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday, and I said, "Not work! Be with you!" and he said, "Okay!" and we were both in an extremely good mood as we ate buttery orecchiette with puffball mushrooms from the yard while watching Peter Gunn under a couch blanket with Mr. R (also under the couch blanket).

But now it is Monday. Back to big-house renovations for other people. Back to giant editing stack for other people. The morning is chilly, 37 degrees, and the furnace is humming quietly, which is a surprise, because the furnace used to hum noisily, which suggests that the new furnace guy I hired last month has done a fine job of tightening things up in the bowels of the machine.

Mr. R is sitting cutely on his chair; Tom is sighing and clanking drawers shut; the Bills beat the Ravens by a hair yesterday so my phone is full of happy son texts; and I am feeling as if dealing with Monday is well within my capability. I've got to edit today, and then grocery shop, and vacuum, and maybe work in the garden, if I have time. My garlic has arrived, so I'll have to prep a bed and plant it this week. I'll need to work on plans for next week's Monson session and for Sunday's chapbook class. And I would dearly love to spend time on my own poems.

But, honestly, I am mostly just happy to be vigorous and alive.

Well, I did manage to keep Mr. R inside all of yesterday. He spent the entire day pacing and staring at me, periodically clawing furniture, refusing to rest until after dark. And then this morning he was a jumping bean. So I looked closely at the wound, which seems to be healing well, and then I gritted my teeth and let him out. If that was the wrong choice, it's on me. But I think he will sit on the stoop, take a small stroll across the street, then come in for his morning nap. And in the end, that will be more restful and convalescent than a day spent pacing and glowering.

But what do I know? It could be a disaster.

This afternoon I'll be reading with Gary Lawless at the Cary Memorial Library, in Wayne, Maine, at 3 p.m. That's about an hour northwest of here . . . a bit of a drive, but it shouldn't be exhausting, as long as I can get home before dark. Maybe I'll see you there?

[ . . . and, hey, look! The cat is already yowling to come back in. My instinct was correct.]

Yesterday Tom hauled his construction trash pile to the dump, and I mowed grass, so the yard is looking somewhat okay again. I harvested the second crop of carrots and tore out the cucumber, picking off all of the tiny immature fruits to make fresh gherkins.

I think T will be back to the shed siding today. I'll have a few hours at home this morning, so my plan is to process parsley and celery for the freezer, clean bathrooms, wash towels. 

Outside, the wind is swirling in the darkness. The temperature is coolish, 50 degrees, but the gusts have a tender, southwesterly lift. I suppose they're hurricane remnants, reduced to kissing now that their fury has blown out. 

Early October in Maine is a most beautiful season--autumn creeping forward, summer holding out her arms. Each meal is a final savor: the last tiny summer squash, plucked from a fading vine, split and grilled in garlic oil; rusty marigold petals scattered over green tomato sauce; freshly pulled carrots julienned in rice vinegar, salt, and toasted mustard seeds; the last pepper, seeded and chopped; the last green beans, spilling out of a bowl.

Why does this keep happening? As soon as I lay out a day for myself, the fates jump into the laundry basket and stomp around on the clean clothes in their muddy combat boots. I plan to go out to the writing salon, and instead we get Covid. I plan to work on revisions, and instead I spend most of the day at the vet while the cat gets stitches.

Ruckus went out first thing yesterday morning, as is his wont, and came back in shortly thereafter, acting completely normal, but then I noticed a wound on his flank. He'd apparently torn his skin on something sharp: a clean tear, bloodless, but the muscle was visible beneath. So I trundled him off to the vet and he got stitched up and was pathetic and woozy and clingy all evening. And now this morning he is back to his old self. He doesn't appear to notice that he's injured, and he's insisting he should be allowed outside, and is working himself up into a giant scene about the injustice of it all. Hurray, my cat is back to himself! Crap, my cat is back to himself.

The vet said he should wear a cone for 14 days and stay inside for 14 days.

Cone came off within 3 minutes. We'll see if he lasts even a day inside.

Either I am a terrible owner or I am a realist.

* * *

I'll be zooming this afternoon, but this morning I hope to be working outside (with the cat glowering through the door? with the cat basking happily in the driveway?). I need to mow grass, and I should tear out the cucumber plant and maybe the beans as well. Tom will be loading his truck for a dump run, so probably I'll be sucked into that project too.

I made a pork roast for last night's dinner, so I'll likely shred the leftovers and turn them into enchiladas with roasted green-tomato sauce. I might poach some pears. The poem revisions continue to dangle raggedly in the aether.