There are forest fires in Nova Scotia and the smoke is blowing into the Gulf of Maine, which means that today's air is likely to be hazy and unpleasant. I hope it's not too bad, and that I'll be able to keep the windows open, because it's also supposed to be hot and we had an air conditioner mishap over the weekend. I acquired another machine yesterday but I doubt T will have a chance to deal with it until Saturday. Until then, let's hope that the prevailing winds are on our side.

The neighborhood seems very quiet this morning. Even the birds are subdued. I slept badly, for no particular reason, and am now feeling thick and slow, as if my brain is the texture of leftover coffee in a diner Bunn-O-Matic. I'm sure I'll pep up shortly but for the moment I'm fairly stupid.

However, the day stretches before me--the usual olio of desk work and housework. I'm still editing the novel, still slowly attacking the spring cleaning, still feeling daunted by my incipient poetry collection. After teaching so many manuscript classes, you'd think I'd have that job down pat. But no.

Part of the problem is that I'm in a "who wants to read this shit" hole. I might be writing deftly these days, but that doesn't mean I've got any confidence about audience. So I need to dig myself out of that useless quagmire . . . yet another chore to procrastinate about. There's always some new way to punch myself in the eye. 

Well, that was a real weekend: glorious weather for a canoe outing, a cookout, and so much gardening and reading. I didn't intend to spend most of yesterday outside, but one thing led to another and I harvested all of the arugula and spinach, planted succession crops of salad greens, carrots, fennel, cilantro, parsley, and dill; transplanted kohlrabi and various flower seedlings; moved some hostas and speedwell into the shade . . . 

It might be a tiny piece of property, but I can find a whole lot to do out there.

But now the beautiful weekend is over, and today I'll be back to my editing stack; back to my exercise schedule; back to errands and phone meetings and housework and that crazy-making stack of uncollected poems.

I've been reading a book about restaurants in the early 1900s, which is also an interesting disquisition on working-class versus elite lunch habits, the move of women into the workplace, the implementation of government food inspections, the grossness of the meatpacking industry, how unions dealt with the racist treatment of waiters, etc. But this week I'll need to turn my attention back to John Donne, I should find another novel to soak up, I want to get back to Walt Whitman . . . There's so much to learn. I will never keep up with it.

Apparently the temperature hit 90 degrees in Portland yesterday, though I never felt that hot. I did all of my sweaty work before 10 a.m.--weeding and mowing and such--then showered and changed into a summer dress, and spent much of the rest of the day reading Colm Toibin's Brooklyn. This time of year, the house still clings to its winter coolness, and I felt like Daisy in Gatsby, draped on the shady couch as a breeze ballooned the hem of my dress.

But the house will become suffocating soon enough, and today T is going to install the air conditioner in my study, which I hope not to have to use much but will be glad to have.

For now the temperature will be more seasonable--highs only in the 60s--and I'm not sure what I'll be doing with myself on this holiday Monday. I ought to tackle some spring cleaning, and maybe I will, but I can't say I'm full of enthusiasm. I want to do a bit of transplanting at some point, but at the moment I seem to have zero ambition, and I feel fine about that.

While I'm doing nothing, I'll share some beauty. This is a smoke bush, planted in the Hill Country last year and thriving. It has already doubled in size and is gorgeous. I planted another variety in the back garden this spring, and it, too, looks magnificent. 

 And what about this iris! Pure lemon, with a tender scent. I am in love.

 

Brownfield Bog is located about an hour northwest of Portland, and we timed our visit precisely, managing to get out of bed by 5 a.m. and slide the canoe into the water by 7:15. By the time we left, at about 10:30, the insects were starting to get spicy, but for the most part our paddle was serene and bite-free.

Bogs are one of my favorite places to canoe in the spring. The water is high, and the bird action is spectacular. We saw scores of red-winged blackbirds and eastern kingbirds. We saw an osprey, a kingfisher, and, to my extreme delight, a singing oriole. We saw flocks of unidentified ducks (they kept flying away ahead of us so I couldn't get a clear view) and T kept spotting warblers, but never clearly enough to name.

This is just the sort of outing that T and I love to take together, and now we are all hot to find other good canoeing spots in southern Maine. It's tricky: there are a number of rivers, but tides and strong currents can make them hard to canoe if you're not an expert paddler; and most of the ponds and lakes are surrounded by houses and filled with motorboats, which is not so enjoyable. Maybe we'll just have to keep going back to the bog. That would not break my heart.

Today it's supposed to get really hot--up into the mid-80s--and my plan is to climb into my weeding clothes this morning and work until the heat kicks in; then take a shower, don a sundress, and loll around with books and possibly a stack of printed-out poems. I am daunted by the sheer volume of material I need to consider for this next collection. I really can't believe how much I've written in these past couple of years: I likely have enough for at least two books. Much, much winnowing will be required.

However, I am not going to let poem worries tarnish my holiday weekend. Tonight T will grill chicken and red peppers over the fire pit, and we'll sit outside together in the warm dusk, maybe play cards, drink a beer, murmur together like friends. New summer is a love affair.

 Just a quick note, as today is canoe day and we are heading out early this morning, hoping to avoid the blackflies and to spend a beautiful morning on the bog.

It's been a perfect Maine spring: chilly mornings, fires in the stove at night, plenty of rain and sun, subdued insects, an R.I.P. groundhog, and the neighborhood cats posing handsomely in a patch of clover.

I'm harvesting arugula, spinach, and lettuce; radishes and green onions. Already I'm drying the first batches of thyme, tarragon, and catnip, and I garnished last night's baked salmon with marigold petals and chive flowers.

I think today will mostly involve laundry, gardening, and poems. I'm well caught up on the novel-editing, and tomorrow T and I are planning a canoe outing, so I'll mess around with my own stuff today. I am determined to start printing out poems that might fit into a next collection. I want to do some weeding and transplanting and take a trip to the nursery. For dinner I might make tacos with leftover roast lamb and fresh greens and a carrot and mint salsa.

Meanwhile, this new collection is niggling at me. I know the parameters of what I'll be putting together--all poems that, in some way, were written in community with other writers--but I have no idea of what it will look like in actuality. I feel nervous, as I always feel nervous. What if this is a stupid plan? What if the poems aren't strong enough to create a compelling structural net? I waste too much time worrying.

It felt good to check "emerald ash borer worries" off my list yesterday. At a completely reasonable price, Sonja the tree expert has now inoculated my ash tree against the invasive pest that's been steadily killing the American ash population. She'll have to repeat the job every few years, but this is so much better than losing a young and (thus far) brilliantly healthy tree. 

When you live in a forest, it's easier to give up on a tree. There are so many others. But here in the city, every lost tree feels like an amputation.

A small rain fell yesterday evening--not a deep drenching but a solid-enough drink. I lit a fire and made a lamb and black-eyed pea stew and wandered from window to window, staring out into the dim green world, the pulsing spring darkness. My peas are climbing the trellis, the beans are unfolding their second leaves, potatoes are pushing out of the soil, a stand of onions throws back its shoulders, infant lettuce fattens as arugula and winter spinach prepare to flower, radishes glow like red marbles . . . In bloom: deep purple irises, pale drift of bridal veil, lilacs still fragrant but beginning to brown, here and there the last yellow tulips clinging to eloquence in the cool mornings . . .

Today, more editing, then housework. A bike ride into the cemetery, laundry on the line, and tonight probably I'll go out to write.

What gaze will I meet, under this slow tide . . . ?

Well, it was a little cold at last night's game, but I have spent many seasons in lawn chairs alongside northcountry Farm Leaguers, so I know how to dress. And the Sea Dogs had a walk-off homer . . . the first I've ever seen in person! And then the walk home under the darkening sky was so pleasant--everywhere the fragrance of invisible lilacs, hedges brushing my hair, the bright windows of the houses, and the Congregational steeple rearing up like a sentry among the roofs.

Add in a good night's sleep, and then an annoying tussle with an explosive French press coffeepot this morning, and you will see that life is as imperfect as ever around here.

Today: back to my editing desk, and then a visit with a tree specialist (also a poet; we are everywhere) who is going to inoculate my ash tree against the invasive emerald ash borer. I just learned that this is possible, and my neighbors and I are eager to get it done, hoping to avoid having to cut down yet another tree between our properties.

After that, I am considering going shopping for an outside table so that we can eat in the yard this summer. I'm longing for a deck, but who knows when T will get a chance to make that happen? In the meantime, the backyard is getting ever more pleasant, and I want to enjoy it in the evenings too.

There's lots of weeding to be done, especially in the Hill Country, as the spring ephemerals fade away. There's lots of everything to be done . . . inside and out, desk and house, garden and mind. 

Tuesday, Tuesday, here you are again. But you're supposed to be a sunny one, and tonight T and I will stroll out to our first minor-league game of the season, and I hope we won't be cold.

I've been pondering a few things lately. Rejection, obviously . . . that sharpened thorn, always honed to stab us, just as we think we can't bear one more no: But also the accidental slide into confidence, when suddenly we realize that we're doing the work we're meant to do, and doing it well. It is difficult to undergo both of these sensations simultaneously. It is always easier to default to I guess my work stinks. Because how can a writer square a career's worth of rejection with the inner knowledge that both the work and the act of doing it are immensely valuable . . . maybe not to the world at large, but in some other, less easily defined way?

As far as public acknowledgment goes, I've been luckier than some and unluckier than others. Judges and readers are subjective: there is no other way to be, in the literary world. Writing isn't a race with a finish line. Of course there's apprentice work, unready work, and a good editor or judge can weed that out. But when that good judge ends up with five excellently made books and one prize, then the choice inevitably devolves to personal inclination.

I think a lot about these issues, not just in terms of my own work but also as regards the work I edit. I frequently deal with manuscripts that have won prizes but then come to me to be "fixed up" before publication. Sometimes that means catching a few typos and asking the author a couple of questions. Sometimes, however, it means serious rewriting . . . which is to say: the book that won the prize was not tagged because of its fine prose or prosody but because judges identified a strength that trumped fine prose or prosody. For those of us who focus deeply on language, this may feel like a painful irony: a creative writing prize given to a book with subpar creative writing . . . how is this a tolerable outcome? But what if the book tells a story that needs to be told? What if the judge has never seen anyone try to tell that story before? Things get complicated, up there in the judge's booth.

I've just finished teaching a manuscript class--a class where I always have to end by telling the participants that I cannot guarantee they'll ever be published. All I can do is offer them a set of entry points into their own creative engagement with the process of collecting poems. It's frustrating for them; it's frustrating for all of us; it will always be frustrating. The eminent poets I know personally still fume and sigh and second-guess themselves, still feel left out and overlooked, still wonder if it's all been a waste.

Easy to say them: Of course it hasn't been a waste. Harder to say the same to myself. But just as necessary.

Monday morning again; and I am relieved to say that finally, after what feels like weeks, I slept through the entire night, 9 to 5: no pacing in the small hours, no snapping wide-awake at 3:45; no tossing and sighing amid the sheets . . . just a long unbroken sleep, and a hazy dream involving my aunt Connie and a lint roller.

I'll be back at my desk today, editing a novel and working on Frost Place stuff; plus probably mowing the overexcited grass, undergoing my exercise regimen, hanging laundry, making bread, all the usual stuff. I am done with teaching till the end of June, not traveling till my nephew's graduation next month. This will be a new and quiet life, and I am hoping I can make use of it creatively, once I get my editing patterns set.

A few dreams for this summer: to pull together a version of a next poetry collection, to read Anna Karenina with my boys, to walk home hand in hand from a minor league baseball game, to make gazpacho, to wear flowered skirts, to watch the moon rise. 

It poured all night, but by daybreak the rain had stopped. Now the neighborhood is muffled in fog; everything is soft and sodden.

Outside a pack of crows carries on in the maples; a mockingbird sings among the lilacs; an early train rumbles past.

I didn't sleep very well, which is unfortunate, given that I have to teach all afternoon. I feel okay now but expect to be slammed with tiredness just at the wrong moment. Still, the early morning is beautiful . . . this dense quivering fog, like mist on a glass.

Yesterday, before the rain began, I transplanted tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, sunflowers into their summer homes. I separated hosta shoots and moved the pieces into various corners of the back garden. And now this fog, and now the first edges of sunshine and warmth: May is poised for glory.

Rain on the way this afternoon, so I will plant tomatoes and peppers and eggplant this morning, now that yesterday's blustery wind has died down. We're forecast to get more than an inch, which will be very welcome as I've been watering every day. But despite the slight dryness, the garden is in remarkably good shape--no groundhog damage, little insect damage, no frost. Something will go wrong soon; something always does; but for the moment things out there are kind of edenic.

I'm hoping to take this entire day away from my desk. My lofty ambition is to mess around for a few hours with dirt and leaves and then clean up and go out for a beer with Tom. Tomorrow I'll be back to teaching, but I'm free all next weekend, and T and I might take the canoe out, which I'm very much looking forward to.

Still, my brain won't let me off the hook. I dreamed last night about playing the violin. I know I need to take it out of its case soon. I know I need to start organizing poems for the next collection. But I'm frozen, for some reason. 

I tell the students in my manuscript classes that compiling a book is as creative a process as writing the individual poems. I believe that; I know it's true. But also, as with writing, there are fallow periods. I suppose that's where I am right now. I can make poems, but I can't move myself forward into seeing them as a larger conversation.

The thaw will come eventually. I've stopped being terrified about not writing, and I'm also not terrified about this hiatus. I'm now old enough to recognize that every mind requires rest, and my not-making periods are important and necessary. They aren't laziness or procrastination. I do have many faults, but those two aren't among them.

Yet there's a weariness. There's that familiar "what's the point" glumness . . . the acknowledgment--again, and again, and once more again--that what I do in this world is nearly invisible. You all know what I mean. You have your own weariness.

I am not repining, or complaining, or sulking. I know how fortunate I am. I know I have purpose. It's not an either/or proposition but one more both/and. I have a vocation, and that vocation means almost nothing to the larger world. I have a sweet and solid life, but the edges crumble away. It's just regular human happy-sadness.

Well, I did not win; nor did Maureen: it was the third person we don't know . . . but how sweet to have our little club of supporters there. I am so grateful for friends.

* * *

Friday morning in mid-May. A cardinal is singing. The lilacs are brilliant. The furnace is running. That's the tale of Maine.

Still, I might buy tomato plants today. The forecast isn't sultry, but the nights do look warmish, which is always the important point for summer-season seedlings. And we've got rain coming in tomorrow, so the timing is right.

Otherwise: A meeting this morning, editing, some class prep, a bike ride. Sheets on the line. Grocery shopping. Revising an essay, beginning to print out poems for the new collection. Maybe getting the violin out of the case.

I'm feeling vaguely blue (competition hangover: it will wear off), but mostly pretty content. Right now my environs are stunningly lovely . . . draped in spring colors, the massive trees leafing out, every window-view a poem. On a walk with my neighbor yesterday we agreed that we lucked out when we ended up here. I think it's the nicest neighborhood in the city . . . so close to downtown, yet remaining its own leafy walkable village, with its old genteel houses and its church spires and children playing ball in the street. The Alcott House may be the shabbiest on the block, but the irises are blooming and the peavines are climbing, and I live here, so I might as well be happy.

My son called yesterday afternoon to remind me of our upcoming project: we're going to spend the summer reading Anna Karenina together. He's going to bring his copy on his canoe trip, and I'm going to carry my copy around the house with me, and then when he gets back we're going to have a confab. Those who know me may be surprised to learn that this was entirely his idea: I did not twist his arm, or even suggest that we should read something together. But I am, of course, very excited about having a Tolstoy reading project with my kid.

An odd fact of life: you long to have a baby, and then you do have a baby, and then you are really distracted/exhausted/overwhelmed by having a baby, and it never occurs to you that someday your baby will grow up and the two of you will read Russian novels together and emote together over the phone about baseball and birds and beef stew, just like best friends.

* * *

Tonight is the big Maine Literary Awards gala at Bates College, and what should I wear? Ugh. I tell you: there is always something to worry about. Thankfully, one thing I don't have to worry about is driving because one of my salon friends has offered to tote a carload, which makes me very grateful. My vision is poor, and my night vision is worse, and my night vision on highways is abysmal, and nobody wants me to be in charge of a car in that situation.

As I think I mentioned, two of us salon-writers are finalists for the poetry book award, so if Maureen wins I can be cheerfully excited for her, and if the third person wins, we can be ironically bereft together, and thus I hope the evening will be manageable or maybe even enjoyable. These things always make me nervous but at least this time I'll have a posse and won't be prowling around the edges like a stray cat.

* * *

In the meantime, I have a day to get through. I need to mend a hole in a sweater, and clean the bathrooms, and vacuum and mop, and finish a small editing project, and flomp through my exercise regimen, and read someone's short-story ms, and revise an essay. Yesterday, finally, my semi-lethargy began to lift, and I spent the morning vigorously planning my part of the Writing Intensive sessions that Teresa and I will be running together at the Frost Place. It's an elaborate concept project that I cannot reveal here, for reasons of fun and surprise, but the two of us are having a great time sussing it out.

We had a freeze warning last night but didn't quite hit the frost line. Still, things are pretty chilly out there. I haven't planted any tender summer crops yet--tomatoes, peppers, or the like--but my beans are sprouting, and I hope they're okay. 

A chill is settling over the little city by the sea. Spring warmth has retreated, and the days are as crisp as autumn. There's an overnight frost watch, daytime temperatures won't get out of the 50s, and I'm likely to fire up the wood stove tonight. That's a classic northcountry luxury: open windows plus hot stove, a combination that can't be beat.

Thus far this week my energy level has been eh. That's not to say I've been idle, but I've certainly dialed down my activity. I've edited a couple of poetry collections, done my exercise regimen, worked outside, run errands, spent the evening with my poetry group, but I've also lounged around, stared aimlessly through windows, and sagged. It seems that ye-old-body-and-brain-continuum is demanding some time off.

Maybe today I'll pep up, or maybe not. I feel perfectly well, just unambitious, which is odd because, despite this sensation, the poems keep pouring out of me, and I know this is good work; in fact, it might be the best work I've ever done.

I'm still working my way through Reynolds's bio, Walt Whitman's America; just finishing up Ford's heartbreaking The Good Soldier; trudging through my Donne project. Yesterday I transplanted seedlings: spinach, carrots, kohlrabi, chard. Today I'll mow grass and answer emails and work on Frost Place plans and do some editing. I'll make tomato sauce and a mango-blueberry cobbler. And the poems, and the poems . . . they tighten like bubbles in my chest . . . pockets of air and memory . . . lies, documents, blood-beat . . .

I've been kind of overwhelmed by the comments on my poem "Late April" . . . very sweet online praise by the august likes of Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Richard Hoffman, and Syd Lea, plus loving notes from friends. It is such a little poem. The original draft was so much longer, but I couldn't seem to juggle anything more than this small simple moment. As I was revising, I kept wondering what I was doing wrong. It was a classic case of second-guessing myself: I kept paring the drafts down, and kept kicking myself for paring the drafts down.

Well, one never knows.

* * *

T got home at about 8:30 last night, tired but cheerful, though this morning he is dragging. A vacation to Brooklyn is always an exhaustion. The friend we stay with owns a bar and keeps very late hours, and it is all too easy to get sucked into his ways. Fortunately for T, I'm going out to my workshop group tonight, so he can sleep on the couch all evening without feeling antisocial.

I've got another slowish work day ahead of me--editing and other desk things, laundry on the line, an exercise session, planting and transplanting, maybe a first stab at some spring cleaning, maybe washing the central Maine dirt roads off my car . . . we'll see what transpires. It's a mosey-along schedule, and I'm glad to have it.

And glad to have T back home. There is nothing like meeting the one you love at a bus station and watching his face light up at the sight of you.  Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Here's a little poem, "Late April," published this morning in Vox Populi.

* * *

I write to you, not from my customary couch corner, but from bed. Being home alone has its odd perks, and one is that I disturb no one when I lounge here at dawn, typing among the pillows. T will be home tonight, and I will be glad to see him, but having a whole bed to myself is its own kind of treat. It's nice to lie here awake in the early morning, with the birds singing like crazy and the crisp air wandering in through the open windows and the comforter pulled up to my chin.

Yesterday was a hard one: I left Wellington around 6 a.m., got home by 8:15, then did laundry and various garden and class prep things, then taught all afternoon, and by dinnertime I was seriously dragging, so much so that I got into bed at 7:30 and stayed there, a thing that I never do. And here I am, still in bed, recovering from a weighty weekend combined with too much insomnia.

But sleep medicine was good: I'm definitely feeling livelier, and shortly I'll fork myself out of here and go make some coffee and get started with my day . . . editing, exercise regimen, groceries, yard work, cooking, all the regular stuff, and then fetching T from the bus station this evening and hearing about the good times in New York City.

This week should be less crazed than last week, though it will still have its moments. The Maine Lit Awards are on Thursday night, so that's a bit of a stressor, and I'll be teaching my final chapbook class on Sunday. But no overnight travel or long drives till June. I'll be glad to stay in one place for a while.

Elegy for Al Ackerman

You were always number 1, alphabetically. But what if you’d been a Zuckerberg or a Zipp, a Miller or a Sanchez? What happens to a fellow who’s always first in line for fluoride in the nurse’s office, first to be weighed during the President’s Physical Fitness Test? What was it like to get your grades first, your diploma first, your draft card first? To be the first guy from school sent to Vietnam? To be Al Ackerman, the first guy who never came back?

 

You were never not first. First flesh identified after the barracks exploded. First corpse’s name shouted on the local airwaves. First prom date with a grave.

 

First memory forgotten, as the rest of us malinger on: Getting fatter. Smoking more packs of Marlboros. Driving more second-hand Ford pickups to more Little League ballgames. Attending more class reunions, in more rundown banquet halls, where the name Al Ackerman is never mentioned. Plodding through the Reagan years, the Clinton years, the endless eras of Bush . . . R to B to C to B. Alphabetical order means nothing these days.

 

And what is left of Al Ackerman, the emperor of A? It won’t be long till the letters on your headstone wear away in the sandy wind. Won’t be long till some kid with a school assignment—a Zuckerberg or a Zipp, a Miller or a Sanchez—kneels beside your name, tracing paper at the ready, and asks his dad, “Is this an A or an H?” The dad will slip on his reading glasses and ponder. “Hal Hackerman. I think I knew that guy.” And the kid will nod, comforted by the existence of facts.

 

Yet that night, at the scrubbed kitchen table, this kid, who is supposed to be finishing his algebra homework, will ink a brand-new history of you. Hal Hackerman, named after a prince in a play. You loved card games and you were born long ago and you sailed the ocean blue. You fell in love with a short man named Don and went bald at the age of nineteen. You grew roses in your backyard and your favorite food was spaghetti and you only went to church on Easter. Once you met the great pitcher Bob Gibson, and he shook your hand and fixed you with his mean pitcher stare, and you never forgot it. Your grandchildren got tired of hearing that story about Bob Gibson.

 

But of course they loved you anyway. You led a life. And now they miss you so very, very much.

[a small fiction: maybe forthcoming in the next collection, or maybe not.]

I wrote a poem yesterday. I went for a walk with my neighbor. I grubbed in the yard. I got my hair cut. I made a good slow dinner for myself: herbed lamb patties, sweet and sour peppers, wild rice, diced avocado, fresh spinach from the garden, homemade chocolate ice cream. I listened to baseball and read Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, and then I went to bed in clean air-dried sheets, in a room with the windows open.

These next two days will not have that ease. I'll be up north and back in less than 24 hours--working when I get there, working when I return . . . wish me luck because I know I'll be frayed.

But at least I pushed myself to make yesterday happen, and the poem I managed to write (if it is a poem) was absorbing and odd and I'm having a hard time tearing myself away from it.

The piece arose from a prompt I gave at the Thursday-night salon: first, the sudden invention of a name, then "talk to this person; tell them something," and a character arises in each person's notebook. Our character was Al Ackerman, and stories of Al, messages to Al, worries about Al circled the room. 

Yesterday Al floated from my notebook into a prose poem, a flash story, a meditation--it could be labeled many things. There he was, a lost being, an invention, a sorrow. Dear Al, whom I never knew: gone too soon, forgotten, remade. How stories become lives, and lives become other lives, and lies become storytelling, and storytelling becomes memory.

* * *

If you missed that epistolary workshop I did a couple of weeks ago for the Maine Poet Laureate project: apparently the recording is available here.

We've still got a few spaces left for this summer's Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching. Remember: you don't need to be a teacher; a number of our regulars are not. If you're looking for a collegial, welcoming, rigorous experience, open to all writers, at any level of skill, this may be just the conference for you.

And, finally, here's some of the student poems on display at the Monson Arts gallery. If you click on the photo and zoom in, you should be able to read them. I'm so proud.

Up early, a flurry to get T to the bus station . . . and now the day stretches before me.

It's supposed to be warm--close to 80 degrees--and there's grass to mow and weeds to pull and tulips to deadhead, plus a passel of desk things to deal with, sheets to get onto the line, a haircut after lunch. 

Yet here I sit in my couch corner, contemplating the treat of not undergoing my exercise regimen, listening to bird racket in the trees, to laundry sloshing in the machine, mulling over a cup of tea, thinking about washing dishes, thinking about those poem blurts I wrote last night, allowing myself a bit of idle space before I start another day of doing.

I'll be on the road/teaching all weekend--a mad dash north, then a mad dash home--so today is my slowdown moment, such as it is: today is my blip of peace. Already, here in my couch corner, I feel my shoulders settling into quietness. For the next 24 hours no one will need me to make them a meal or show up for their event. For the next 24 hours I am my own clock.

Woke up in Monson to 35 degrees. Came home to Portland to 75 degrees. Maine is a crazy place. But it was a great day, filled with theater experiments and modern dance experiments and drawing and writing experiments. The kids were excited and completely engaged, and I loved doing it all too.

Now here I am in my customary couch corner, awake too early because the birds are making such a racket. We're supposed to have another warm day in town, and I will be busy with desk stuff and housework and then my writing salon tonight . . . wallowing in the homey things for a day or two, before I hit the road again on Saturday.

Outside there is cacophony--gulls screeching, cardinals burbling--so much bird shout. I wonder if I'll ever sleep late again.

I've been reading Emma; also, my friend Maureen Thorson's poetry collection Share the Wealth, which is one of my competitors for the Maine Literary Award . . . an excellent book, and so different from mine. Maureen is a surrealist of the natural world, and her book takes such a bracing and sardonic and often very funny approach to seeing. I do enjoy watching another writer do work that I can't do at all. And the contrast with Emma was also bracing; I kept flipping back and forth between Jane's 1812 concerns and Maureen's 2022 concerns, thinking about how these two sharp-eyed women artists were refining their observations into wit and vigor.

It's good to have these sorts of books in my bag.

 Lake Hebron, evening, early May.

This is the view from the cabin where I'm staying in Monson. Usually they house me in one of the guest apartments up on the main road; this is the first time I've been posted down here, tucked into a curve of the lake.

Shortly I'll climb out of bed and hike into town, in search of coffee. But for now I am staring out at a row of trees, still mostly bare but with a fuzz of green and red catkins; at a slate sky; at the road, where log trucks bustle around the curve and disappear behind the hill.

I'm not sure what will be happening today in class, but I expect it will be fun. "Theater collages," my friend Gretchen calls her plan. "It will involve state fairs and memories of middle school."

Since I spent most of yesterday evening reading Jane Austen's Emma, which is about neither state fairs or middle school, I may be a bit imaginatively laggy with these prompts. 

Yesterday I edited a manuscript and worked on Frost Place stuff all morning, then went out to grocery-shop and to buy a good, not-icky-plastic hanging planter to decorate the new shed. So now the bright paint is softened by lobelia and vinca, and the refrigerator contains food, and I am ready to head north this afternoon for my final Monson class of the season.

I've done zero prep for it because we'll have guest teachers coming in for the day. Moreover, the guest teachers are doing the driving north, so for two and half hours I will sit like a princess in the back seat of their car.

Till then I'll putter with desk stuff, water new seedlings, deal with laundry, undergo my exercise routine, and so on and so forth. My burgeoning stack of poems is becoming an issue: I need to start thinking about the next collection, but I'm so busy working with other people's collections that I can hardly bear the thought of my own. This summer, I keep telling myself. This summer. If I can snag a week without much other work, maybe I can make some headway.

 Both bedroom windows were open all night, and I woke at 5 a.m. feeling as if I'd been asleep in a treehouse. The room was filled with loud song--from the lilac pressed up against the house, from the maples in the backyard, from the sky overhead: birds of all stripes carrying on at full volume. I love it but their noise is not conducive to sleeping late.

Yesterday morning I watched a possum trundle across the backyard. On other mornings I've seen a raccoon and a skunk. The wildlife is up 'n at 'em . . . and yet, no sign of that groundhog. Could it be that I successfully discouraged her from denning up under my neighbor's shed? Or is she lying in wait until the plants get beautiful, and will soon mow them down like usual?

For now, my only trouble is squirrels, who keep biting the heads off the tulips and digging up pansies and engaging in other varieties of delinquent behavior. Even the insects haven't started in on their damage. The garden looks sweet and hopeful. I planted beans this weekend, plus lots of flower seeds--mignonette, nasturtiums, sunflowers, zinnias, nicotiana . . . mostly in a little jiffy pots under the cold frame, so they can get a jump in growth before I dig them into the soil.

Meanwhile, as I was teaching yesterday, T finished the shed . . . well, mostly finished: he still has a couple of small touch-ups to do. However, the big stuff is done: new door, the painting. The result is ridiculously cute. Here's a front view, along with posing cat.

This will be a nutty week, though today will start quietly--just another round of desk work, groceries, etc. But tomorrow I head north again, last Monson class on Wednesday, then back to Monson on Saturday for the kids' gallery opening, home on Sunday morning, teaching on Sunday afternoon. No weekend for me. And T will be in NYC for a chunk of the time, which adds a twist to the situation.

But, hey, I got two poems accepted yesterday, two recent ones, so even in the throes of busyness I'm managing to do the real work . . . or at least to convince somebody else I am. And this weather has been divine.

Today I am scrambling back onto the work train. This afternoon I'll run the first of a three-Sunday seminar on manuscript organization. Then next week I'll need to go up to Monson twice: once for class, once for a gallery opening. That will end my high school season, just as Frost Place season is getting underway. No matter what, there will always be something to get frantic about.

But what a beautiful day we had yesterday--75 degrees, sunny, with a soft wind! I worked outside--planting, weeding, mowing--then changed into clean clothes and walked up to the market to buy dinner: flank steak, red onions, and peppers for the grill and, delight of delights, fiddleheads. How I miss my Harmony patch; I was so happy to see them there.

For lunch T walked down to one of the local Vietnamese restaurants and bought bahn mi sandwiches, and we ate them messily outside, in the sunshine.  He spent most of the day finishing the shed, the bits he couldn't get done before winter settled in. He built a door and cut trim, painted everything, and today is hoping to get a second coat on and everything installed so that he can finally call the project done. He's also been talking about his next carpenterial venture . . . a deck, and I am holding my breath, trying not to get too excited, because that would be so, so, so nice. All we have now are some temporary stairs, and the back of the house is ugly and raw-looking. A deck and real entrance stairs would be such an improvement.

It will be another glorious day, weather-wise, and I'll be holed up in my study all afternoon, working away at manuscripts. But I'll catch a bit of the day this morning: as soon as I finish writing to you, I'm going to get dressed, pull Vita the Bike out of the shed, and go for my first ride of the season. Tires are pumped, frame is washed, spring is everywhere, and I am excited.

All week these four rosy tulips have been the centerpiece of the view from my front window. But already, since this photo was taken, the view has changed; the petals are dropping; time, squirrels, and weather have imposed their will. Loveliness is so brief.

It is Saturday, my only day off this weekend, as I'm beginning a three-session manuscript seminar tomorrow. I've got lots to do--laundry, gardening, groceries--but the forecast is spectacular: bright sunshine, temperatures in the 70s, after a week of cold rain. T and I are planning our first fire-pit dinner of the season, and I'm also hoping to get my bike out, dust it off, pump up the tires, and take it for an inaugural spin.

I worked on a poem draft yesterday, talked to Teresa about Donne, dealt with various teaching-related issues, edited a manuscript, and then I made porkchops marinated in lime and garlic chives, buttered quinoa and millet, roasted fennel and onions, new lettuce and arugula from the garden, and the piece-de-resistance, a mango galette--not only cute but also delicious. I was quite pleased with myself, as every part of this meal was a total invention.

Cooking is so fun.

Woke up to rain, of course, but the clouds will begin to clear today. After a chilly wet week, temperatures are supposed to rise, the sun is supposed to come out, and by Sunday (when I have to spend the entire afternoon on zoom, of course) the weather will be glorious.

Still, there will be no laundry on the line today. Everything outside is completely sopped--lively and growing, spongy and dripping. No towel would dream of drying out in this weather. But I got my housework done yesterday, and a fair amount of desk work, so if Helios should venture into town this afternoon, I'm prepared to fling myself into his arms.

Last night I went out to the salon and for some reason kept writing drafts about clothes: a memoir of childhood play clothes, a diatribe about a mean dress. The play-clothes blurt might be worth messing around with, and maybe I'll do that today, along with talking to Teresa about Donne, and cranking out a few more pages of editing, and making a mango pie. (I've discovered that those small yellow mangos work as a straight substitute for peaches in recipes, and they also happen to be on sale.)

I do wonder why my brain was so fixated on clothes.

Already the clouds seem to be breaking up. Watery sunlight filters through a drenched sky. A cardinal belts out Pew, pew, pew in a local maple. The neighborhood air smells like toast.

I am thinking about a thousand things, and it is spring.

Even I, a person who loves all weather, drew the line at kneeling in the mud in yesterday's 40-degree rain. No weeding or planting was accomplished. The cat and I stayed in all day, I lit a fire mid-afternoon, T and I ate lentil soup for dinner: it was, as my mother likes to complain with a shudder, raw.

I don't know that today will be much better, but I'll need to trudge out into it anyway: meet a writer for coffee this morning, then head out to the salon tonight. In between times, I have to houseclean and catch up on paperwork, probably edit a little, probably futz around with Frost Place stuff . . . it will be one of those days, filled with a thousand niggly chores.

But I got a lot done yesterday: importantly, I finished the first draft of that essay I've been laboring over, so that was a relief. I'm not sure why I found it so hard to put together, but such is the writing life. Sometimes the work feels like sewing teeth. Anyway, I crossed the finish line, puffing and sweating and tripping over my shoelaces, and now I can set the piece aside and let it stew in its sauce for a while. (Boy am I going crazy with the mixed metaphors this morning.)

And I finished a poem, and I organized a class, and I got a chunk of editing done, so today I can "relax" (e.g., vacuum and scrub toilets) without guilt. What a romantic life a poet leads.

Meanwhile, the rain keeps falling. The gardens are sodden; the streams are overflowing. Maine is water and mud and quarreling birds and green shoots and fog and cloud and magnolia blossoms and earthworms in puddles and torrents over dams and blue-eyed forget-me-nots smiling in the too-long grass.

It looks like we've got yet another day of drizzle and fog ahead. Oh, well. I'm not against a cozy growing week, and that's certainly what's happening out there. Everywhere buds are swelling to the bursting point; sharp tulip blooms glow in the mist; the grass is Technicolor; arugula and spinach beg to be harvested.

I'll likely do a bit of gardening despite the wet. I want to start weeding out the maple seedlings in the Hill Country (the rough bit of "woodland" between my driveway and the neighbors'), and I want to plant sunflowers and zinnias in the cold frame so they get a good start before I transfer them into the ground. But that will come later in the day. First, my exercise bout; then a meeting and class prep for Sunday; then some editing and a little more time with that essay I'm writing, which is close to being done, I think.

I'm so grateful to have a week with some elbow room in it. It's amazing how many hours I spend on picky little this-n-thats: writing up class descriptions for workshops I'm asked to teach, corresponding with potential students, etc., etc. None of this is actual "work," but it's all work, and I'm glad to have some space to get such stuff under control.

Next week I'll be up north twice, so the breathlessness will return. But today, spring rain, cups of tea, Jane Austen's Emma. An old song but a good one.

Looks like we're in for another round of choppy weather today: thunderstorms, maybe hail, and a temp that won't climb higher than 60 degrees . . . a strange raw summer-like menu. No laundry on the line, clearly, and likely no work outside either. But yesterday did brighten after lunchtime, and I'm glad I had the wherewithal to pick up the branch detritus and then quickly run the reel mower over the patch of front lawn. Weather like this turns grass into fiends.

Inside, I'll be editing, juggling Frost Place stuff, working on poems, reviving my languishing essay. If the weather turns out better than expected, I might get my bike out, fill the tires, dust off my helmet, take it for a neighborhood spin. But I doubt the weather will be better than expected.

Whatever happens, it's pleasant to have a few days offstage. For the moment the sky is bluing, a phoebe is singing, and the neighbor's cherry tree is shimmering with new blossoms. I want to be a poet today, and I think I will be. Maybe poet only means "Pay attention." 

There's something about a very wet Sunday: it feels like a kind of holiday, when everyone is obliged to do nothing in particular. T and I spent our Saturday rushing from one project to another and, in contrast, spent our Sunday idling over poems (me), photo contact sheets (him), Donne and Le Carre (me), the New Yorker (him), as a fire hissed in the grate and the cups were repeatedly refilled with tea. Early afternoon, I tuned into the Sox game on the radio. Late afternoon, we yawned and stretched and donned our raincoats and splashed around the block to the local restaurant, for a drink and some oysters. It was all very urbane.

And it was a good thing, too, that we had such a relaxing day because the night was wild. A gale whipped up, rain crashed against the windows, the roof felt like it was lifting off. Even the cat struggled to stay calm. Nobody got much sleep for a while.

This morning my cold frame is upside down; the row cover blew off the chard bed and wedged itself between the cars; the cucumber trellis is flat; twigs and catkins and garbage cans are everywhere. Apparently we got 3 inches of rain; what a torrent!

But now, it seems, the storm has blown out to sea. A bit of slow drizzle patters against the windows, but the wind has gentled. Cardinals are singing loudly; the cats have resumed their prowls. After I get dressed, I'll try to resettle the garden arrangements and figure out what other damage might have ensued.