I woke, this morning, in my own bed, after the first real sleep I've had in a week. It is very foggy here in the little northern city by the sea, and summer seems to have arrived while I was away. As in New Hampshire, it rained all week, but the nights were warm, and so everything--from the dogwood tree across the fence to my young tomato plants--has exploded into confident beauty.

The week at the Frost Place was, as always, magical, elegiac, chaotic, tearful, giggly, damp, intelligent, silly, heartbreaking--which is to say, I'm wordless, even though I spent day after day immersed in words. Being back in person after three years of zoom was such an immense relief, despite the numerous discomforts I knew would arise in an already rough-edged place that had been closed down for three years. Being surrounded by people who are so vulnerable to words has filled me and exhausted me, in the best ways. But I'll need a day or two to find my tongue again.

Today my plan is to ease back into the quotidian world . . . restart my exercise regimen, wash some clothes, step out into the garden, take as many naps as I need . . . For now, I am so happy to sit in my couch corner, to carry a cup of coffee to Tom, to listen to the gull squawking above the fog. I feel loved, by the friends I left, by the friend I came home to. I feel like I am sitting in a small cloud of that love. 

from One Day

Dawn Potter

 

6 a.m. 

 

I’ve been up since five, stacking clean dishes,

carrying coffee to Tom, who is climbing into his

Carhartts and work boots, who is making his lunch,

who is gathering his tools, as I lug his filthy yesterday

shirts down to the washing machine, sweep his yesterday

sawdust up from the kitchen floor. Six a.m.

is work time: I step outside into the slant light

 

of summer morning, laden with laundry, my brain

ticking over what I need to do before I can allow myself

to sit down and write this poem . . . water the new

beans sprouting up beneath the trellis, scrub

last night’s soup off the stovetop, pick the last

few peas before sun swells them into starch . . .

The poem that I am not writing also swells, but, words:

 

please, murmur in your crib a moment longer.

Across the neighbor’s fence a dogwood tree flaunts

her bridal joy. I pin up the socks and underwear

and consider the depredations of groundhogs.

And now here comes the poem I am not writing, staggering

across the damp grass. The poem is biting off the carrot

tops and parsley leaves. The poem is scratching up

 

all of the bluebells I planted last fall. The kitchen floor

is as clean as my face, the tomato plants are shooting

toward heaven like Jack’s beanstalk, and the poem is fidgeting

in this still air that smells faintly of salt, in this sea-brine

early morning. She is wiping her nose on my apron,

she is stretching her arms to me, begging me to lift her up,

to kiss her wet fat face.

[first published as "First of July" in Vox Populi; forthcoming in Calendar]

 Idyl

 

Dawn Potter

What we have is a leaky shower,

and Tom is lying in it, caulking the drain.

It takes guts to be handy—

guts, and a tolerance for misery.

 

Meanwhile, I sweep crumbs and boil spaghetti

and wash spinach and picture my high school

report card droning its dot-matrix platitude:

“ :: has :: flare :: for :: the :: subject :: ”

 

He does.

But if I had a bathtub instead of a leaky shower,

there’d be no need for flare. The wet book in my hands

would be Villette or maybe Faust,

 

and all of the water would go straight down the drain,

just like in the movies.

O, for a lightbulb, for hot and cold water and oil in the tank.

We live in a time of miracles,

 

when the food doesn’t rot, unless we ask it to.

Dear handyman, so carefully not letting the cat lick caulk,

I empty this sloshing pail in your honor.

[first published in On the Seawall; forthcoming in Calendar]

What I Should Have Said to the Person Who Asked Me Why the Fields Are Littered with Old Cars

Dawn Potter 

Rotten apple in the tire treads & the bees sucking their homesick sweetness from bruise & bang, O autumn, season of mellow breathlessness, when the firewood isn’t split yet & the shed roof won’t stand another winter’s weight of snow & I am rushing from orchard to kitchen, dishpans heaped with fruit too soft to bite, though why am I always so desperate to save every single one, as if it would be a crime to let rot have her way, a crime to bless the hornets & the blowflies, to let the wheelbarrow rest in the way it’s always dreamed of, future of slow rust in the dooryard, contemplations of wind, of raccoons, of the woman who wanders out into the unmown grass, cigarette pinched between slender fingers, nightgown stained with coffee, for she too will be honored to rust in this yard, where the mice scurry under the collapsing shed, where evening shivers & hugs a new moon to its sagging breast

[first published in Maine Arts Journal; forthcoming in Calendar]

Waterloo

Dawn Potter

 

 

We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most

intimate.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, “To Hölderlin” 

 

 

The lindens in the square tremble

in the wind like peasants kissing the feet

of Jesus. They lift their arms and wail,

and I have read of such kissing,

read of how bodies drown.

The sky grows. Agnès, who is busy and shy,

 

weeps to hear the peasants weeping,

weeps for the lindens buckling into the wind.

In the square, horses clatter and rear, their hooves

ring on the cobblestones. Drowning and wrath,

drowning and wrath, night and day, but Agnès

is kissing the wind, weeping,

 

as the lindens sway, as the lindens tremble.

I have read of such kissing. 

[first published in Live Encounters; forthcoming in my collection Calendar]

Today is the day. The house is clean, the garden is tidy, and I stuck a list of "don't forgets" for T on the refrigerator. I stuffed all of my clothes into a suitcase, all of my books and papers into bags. Now I just need to cram everything into the clean and gassed-up car and head west into the mountains.

The forecast looks dreary, but that's no surprise. I've collected all kinds of footwear, two coats, even a pair of gloves, should the atmosphere get very dank. Likewise, I have summer skirts and sandals, should the weather suddenly turn humid and hot. Anything can happen in those hills.

I have stacks of poems, and stacks of books, and stacks of reminders about meals and bus schedules. I have a bag of games and Anna Karenina and a brand-new lap-desk machine and a playlist ranging from Otis Redding to Lizzo.

I likely won't be writing to you regularly, but we'll see . . . maybe I'll post in the afternoons now and then, or maybe the early mornings will turn out to be perfect for letters. Or I might not have wifi. Anything can happen in those hills.

If any of you are within driving distance, please do stop by for the readings: Tina Cane on Sunday, me on Monday, participants on Tuesday, and Teresa Carson on Wednesday--all free and open to the public, all at 7 p.m. in the Henry Holt Barn.

And wish us luck. After three years online, an in-person gathering feels momentous and emotional. There will be tears.

Thursday morning. In the lilacs a robin chortles lustily as sunlight wrestles out of the fog. I think it will be another bright day outside, though clouds are moving in for conference week. Today will be packing day, and housecleaning day, and maybe weeding day, if I have time. No writing salon tonight: I don't have the wherewithal, what with so much poetic socializing on the horizon. I want a last quiet night at home.

Yesterday I did another chunk of yardwork: more compost spreading, plus replacing the spring pansies with summer lobelias, planting nicotiana and zinnia seedlings in a few bare spots, trying to fill in for high summer color. And I did manage to vacuum the sand out of the car too. That was a boring job, though the cat did make it more fun by jumping around among the seats.

Really, I think I'm just about ready for the odyssey, if only I can figure out how to pack all of my materials (and make sure the cat isn't mixed in with them). So much paper, so many books!

Yesterday, in the annals of weird work week: I printed out several hundred pages of faculty materials, then worked on my party playlist, then mowed and trimmed and did some weeding. Today: a trip to the nursery for compost and warm-weather annuals, then dealing with said materials, then vacuuming out the car, then planning my Monday-night poetry reading.

Weirdly, it's not supposed to rain today, though we're still not forecast to get any real warmth. I wonder if summer weather will ever arrive in Maine. We're in some strange bubble, here in the little northern city by the sea: rain and fog, rain and fog, thermometer trapped in the 50s and 60s, a cool and temperate and slightly mildewy land.

But maybe a day of sun will dry the laundry and unfrizz my hair. The garden is looking so lovely right now, after all this vigorous tending. I will leave it for a week with a clear conscience; and when I return, it will be twice as big. This is the season of Jack-and-the-beanstalk miracles, when a tomato plant grows half a foot overnight.

I am still reading Anna Karenina, still fiddling with new poem drafts. I haven't looked at my new ms for a week or so. It is gestating, I guess. Or molding. Probably I'll bring it along for the reading . . . one more stack of papers to tote. That's what I'll be working on tomorrow: how to organize and pack hundreds of pages of materials, a stack of books, and a suitcase full of all-weather gear plus cute skirts. FYI, my car is very small.

I know I'm talking like I've never been to this conference before, even though I've been directing it for more than a decade. But those three pandemic years were kind of a version of amnesia, and now I can't remember how I did anything in person.

It has already been a strange work week: hours of mulch hauling, followed by an afternoon in mall land hunting down party games. Today will also be odd: grass mowing and trimming in the morning, followed by playlist compilation. In between I'll be printing faculty paperwork, texting staff, and trying very hard not to forget anything, though of course I will forget many things. But I have been sleeping like a rock, thanks, no doubt, to all of that mulch hauling, and lots of sleep always makes my life better. So I'm pretty cheerful, despite the mental uproar.

The leaf-pile project is now finished. I did not have quite enough compost to cover every backyard bed, but I got all of them weeded and most of them mulched, and will eventually buy a few bags of compost to finish the job. I drove to the fish market after my mall odyssey and bought bluefish fillets ($9 a pound, an excellent deal for an unfairly maligned fish. Why don't people love bluefish and mackerel?), which I sautéed with baby red onions, garlic scapes, and fresh parsley. I read Anna K and fiddled with a poem draft and texted a kid and beat T at cribbage.

It will be another cool damp day here; maybe some sun by midmorning, but I'll believe it when I see it. We got more rain last night; it's been impossible to dry laundry, but the shrubs are in heaven, and my hair is a ball of frizz.

Tonight, for dinner: baked chicken and herb dumplings, lots of fresh lettuce, homemade vanilla ice cream with raspberry sauce. Cooking during garden season is so fun.

[Pardon the scatty focus of this letter, but such is the state of my brain. This does make me wonder if maybe teachers should assign essays to students that actually replicate how students think. That might be interesting for everyone.]

This will be a strange work week as I'll be doing things like (1) expanding the playlist on my phone so I can DJ a Saturday night social; (2) planning activities for said social; (3) vacuuming beach sand out of my car so I can drive faculty without embarrassment.

I labored hard yesterday: several sweaty hours spent pitchforking leaf mulch into garden beds and then relaxing with another batch of spring cleaning in the kitchen. I've got more of both to do today, plus a pruning project with my neighbor, plus mowing, plus washing sheets, plus the aforementioned party planning.

Anyway, the weather should be less rainy, at least for a few days. And my leaf mulch pile is <chef's kiss>. I understand that most people in town don't have room to speed-compost a leaf pile, but, boy, does it make a beautiful soil amendment (and it costs zero money, and spreading it is a superb workout, and the beds look gorgeous and gratified afterward).

Finally the rain seems to have stopped, though the sky is still grim. We got more than an inch of water, and everything is sodden--peonies splayed flat, storm drains roaring like creeks. I don't know what chores I'll be able to do outside. My neighbor and I had been planning to prune lilacs together, and maybe we'll manage that. But I don't see much hope for mowing or weeding. The air is sunless and the ground is mud.

Yesterday I messed around with three poem drafts, washed a few kitchen shelves, made chicken stock, read a lot of Anna Karenina, even went for a small rainy walk. Today I've got to go grocery shopping, and maybe I'll undertake another batch of kitchen scrubbing. I do hope I can get outside; I'm feeling house-squeezed, and I really, really want to get the yard in good shape before I desert it for the Frost Place.

Right now my plan is to leave here on Friday morning, but I'm prepared for emergency early departure, should that be necessary. I've got so much stuff to haul--stacks of printouts, stacks of books--and I haven't even begun to think about prepping for my reading or choosing my clothes. The White Mountains in June are impossible to pack for. It is always raining/blistering hot/below freezing, frequently on the same day, so I always cram my suitcase like I'm going away to college. It's so silly.

Yesterday was our one sunny day--rain before, rain afterward--so I spent the morning weeding and planting in the vegetable garden. Then Frost Place stuff: three phone meetings in the afternoon, plus a flurry of back-and-forth texts . . . but programming is getting finalized, meals are getting arranged, metaphorical rocks are getting shoved into new corners. I'm feeling optimistic.

I think today will be mostly rain. I'd had hopes of weeding and mulching the back gardens, but maybe that will get done tomorrow. Instead, I've got chicken stock to make, and plenty of spring-cleaning tasks in the house, plus poem drafts to work on and maybe the new collection to send out. I will stay busy, no doubt.

With all of this rain, the peas and potatoes are in glorious shape. Chard and bok choi are eager, lettuce is thick, and the young shrubs are filled with delight. Onions and garlic are tall and strong; everywhere is green and green and green. (Of course the battered peonies are less pleased, but one can't have everything.)

Meanwhile, I am reading Anna Karenina, which is so full of sadness and wrong decisions.

This morning I am significantly more coherent: desk work managed, housework managed, car-repair expenses minimal, plus I wrote two decent drafts at last night's salon. I've got a bit more desk work to deal with this morning, but mostly I want to focus on gardening today, though I do have Frost Place meetings as well.

Today it's supposed to maybe even possibly be a little bit sunny, odd as that seems. But of course more rain is on the way, and then I'll be in New Hampshire for a week, so my yardwork window is small. All of this rain has brought out the weeds in force, and among other things I need to cultivate the vegetable beds and start mulching flower beds, now that last fall's giant leaf pile has transformed into usable detritus.

I have no idea how much I'll actually accomplish, though. I've got many distractions, including those two new drafts I wrote last night: (1) a poem about Anne Sexton; (2) a poem about boys in the woods with guns. Naturally I can barely keep my hands off them.

 . . . and here I am again, the proud (e.g., weary, irritated, resigned) possessor of a brand-new MacBook Air. Ugh.

When I got the call from the repair guy about the old machine, euthanasia was clearly the suggested route. Busted display, failing logic board, bad battery . . . the cost of fixing the old girl would have equaled the cost of purchasing a new one. 

And so, because I live 11 minutes away from an Apple Store (and because I have an excellent backup system: phew), the problem was quickly, if expensively, solved . . . another plus of not living in the backwoods anymore. If I'd been in Harmony, the angst would have been serious.

I'm relieved, because this was supposed to be a busy week of writing introductions and printing out materials and updating various Google docs and so on and so forth. Instead, I spent a chunk of prime work time gnashing my teeth and spring-cleaning the kitchen.

But we did go out to see a great Yo Lo Tengo show on Tuesday night, so that distracted me from my woes. And this nice new computer is indeed very nice and new. Such springy keys! Such a shiny screen!

Thus, today, finally, I'll be back on track. Lots of Frost Place stuff, reading faculty plans, finishing intro essays, dealing with logistics; and then, in the afternoon, housework; and then, tonight, going out to write, which I haven't done for a couple of weeks and probably won't be able to do again until after the conference is well over.

(By the way, I'm taking the car in for service this morning. There better not be some kind of machine virus going around. I don't think I can endure another fat bill.)

 Hey, pals— This is just a quick note via my phone to say that my computer is busted. It’s too hard to post much from here so you won’t hear from me again till the machine is fixed. Let’s hope that’s soon.

For whatever reason, I could not buckle down to desk work yesterday. It was like I'd forgotten how to write: the mere thought of taking notes on poems or putting together any kind of essay on them made me blink and itch. I could barely even open a novel; I don't know what was going on. Seasonal word allergy, I guess. So I gave in and threw all my energies into laundry and mowing and walking and talking and making a blueberry pie and roasting a chicken, in hopes of getting whatever this is out of my system.

Today, I hope, will be a fresh start. We've got rain in the forecast, and maybe that will settle me into sedentary pursuits. I've got a bit of editing to do first, and then I'll curl into my study chair and start working my way into faculty poems. Or at least this is what I imagine I'll be doing. It's entirely possible that my brain is still haywire. In which case I may be marching through puddles in my rain boots or doing jumping-jacks in the basement.

I got home around 3 p.m. yesterday afternoon, dealt with the noisy and offended cat, sat outside with him in the garden for a while, and tried to read Anna Karenina, without much success. I was tired. So when T texted from Amherst and said he was just leaving there but that we should go out to dinner together, I was relieved to have a plan to that would let me off the immediate hook of doing anything useful. He showed up around 6, and then at 7 we walked arm in arm around the corner to our local and had a really good meal of mussels and porkchops, drank rosado from fancy glasses, and eavesdropped on the French-speaking family in the booth behind us, who were saying things like "Alors! Ketchup!" 

We were glad to be together again.

And now the week begins again. I will have some bits and pieces of editing to deal with, but mostly I'll be focusing on Frost Place prep. My big tasks this week are to reread faculty collections and write intro essays for their readings, but I also have three tons of laundry to wash, grass to mow, groceries to buy, etc. And after 500 miles in the car, I need to get back into my exercise groove.

Tomorrow night we're going out to see one of our favorite bands, Yo lo Tengo, at the State Theater, so I'm excited about that. Thursday night I hope to be writing with my pals. This weekend I'll be home, home, home. There's much to look forward to.

And I've been thinking a lot about that over this past weekend: what a difference it makes to have something to look forward to. Whether you're very young or very old, the joy of anticipation looms large. Without it, life can seem pretty pointless. I do not want to forget this lesson.

While I was at a graduation in Vermont, Tom was at another in Massachusetts . . . two nephews, two different directions. Throughout the day we traded texts: how was your graduation? how was yours? It was fairly comic.

I spent the morning in a hockey rink and the afternoon playing wilderness croquet, whereas T spent the afternoon in a college chapel and the evening in an Italian restaurant. His affair was a little dressier than mine.

Now, this morning, we'll both hit the road and reconvene in the little northern city by the sea. Hours on the road, grocery shopping this afternoon, piles of laundry, and work tomorrow . . .  the day will not be restful in any way, but such is travel.

Thanks for the kind words about the poem I posted yesterday. I'm very grateful.

The bog is multitudes

Dawn Potter 

 

i

Broken or cut, which is worse?

What are living trees when dead?

Here cobwebs dangle and skunks twine

Like blue-black solos behind the midnight drums.

Not silent but quiet. A misery lofts

Among the passersby: frantic moths,

June bugs scraping against the sagging night.

Husks by morning.

 

 

 

 

 

ii

Broken or cut, which is better?

What are dead trees when living?

Spiders climb, and muskrats swim

Like golden harps among the sunlit violins.

Songs of pleasure screech and dive,

And the timid watchers, the yellowlegs,

The wood ducks rustling against the reeds,

Hum into lives among the grasses,

Rise into lives by dusk—

 

O promise to leave me lonely

summer

my homing bird

 

 

 

 

 

iii

For instance,

these shattered tree-ancestors, these sap-laden

sproutlings thrusting up through leaf litter and mud.

My canoe bobs—aimless, quivering. Trickles of lake lap the gunwales.

Grey spiders, fat as thumbs, embroider and hem; two young muskrats

paddle after their stout mother; a fuzzy halo of sunlight strobes their

rippled trail, and a brace of wood ducks, alarmed, crashes into flight,

plot-twist into air-world, sky-passage, cloud-trail, and who knows

where their highway ends?

 

 

 

 

 

iv

air-world

 

 

O

bird

 

 

 

 

 

v

air-world          cloud-trail        red sky-passage

                        rising to dusk               O

            star-shore                     my homing bird

                        wrap me in your feathered cloak

let me stagger               against your pounding heart

[published in Hole in the Head Review; forthcoming in Calendar]

Well, this morning I'll hit the road again . . . off to Vermont for a nephew's high school graduation. Yesterday I shipped the last editing project on my desk, placed that essay on Baron's and Teresa's poems, did the housework, managed to get a bit of gardening done between showers, wrapped presents, sort of packed, and am mostly ready to buckle down for a car trip.

The weather should be tolerable--maybe a little more rain, but not much--and I'll have Anna Karenina for whiling away the lonely nights.

For now I am snug in my corner. Everything outside is dripping, dripping. A robin is singing. The peonies are bowed to the ground.

Yesterday afternoon, as soon as I went into the garden to weed, the rain started up again; then it poured again in the evening; and this morning everything is, again, dripping and cold. What a dank, wet start to June. Meanwhile, P is sending me photos from New York that make the sky look like LA's in the 1970s--the smoke situation is unreal. We had a whiff of smoke in Portland last night, but nothing to compare. 

Tonight I won't go out to the salon to write. I'm leaving for Vermont tomorrow and I have too much stuff to do . . . graduation presents to wrap and house chores to slap-dash and desk work to grind out, plus I'm longing for a quiet night before embarking on a weekend of flurry.

Reading-wise, I'm resting with a Louisa May Alcott novel before beginning the big summer reading project: Tolstoy's Anna Karenina with my boys. Teresa and I have put Donne on hiatus till August, so Tolstoy will be my only homework for a few months. I'm looking forward to another dive into the novel (my tenth? my twentieth?), though of course I'm dreading the misery of the tale. That's the hard part about being a serious rereader: I always know how bad things will get.

Otherwise, what's new? I finished that essay I was working on and sent it to a journal. I did a bit of legwork with poetry-book publishers, querying and such. I wrote a sonnet. I made oven-fried chicken and scallion bread and a mushroom salad. 

When I get back from Vermont, I'll be on the big downslide to the Frost Place conference: frantically writing introductions for readings, building giant stacks of books and paperwork, hysterically rewriting plans at the last minute, etcetera etcetera ad infinitum. For now I am trying to put that out of my mind and just think about wrapping paper and cute graduation cards. I was lucky to steal a few days to work on my poetry collection. I won't have another such chance any time soon.

Out of the blue, a friend emailed and offered to read the new collection manuscript. Strangely and wonderfully, this was also a friend to whom I'd dedicated the book, but she didn't know that, as I hadn't told any of the dedicatees yet. They are three couples and my dead best friend from college--all of them deeply beloved by the four members of my family, all of them prominent in helping to bring up our children, in loving us both as a unit and separately, welcoming us so easily into their homes, so generously, that their hearths have, over time, become a version of ours.

It is hard to raise children. It is hard to make art. It is hard to be a partner and to support a partner. It is hard to earn a living and to keep the stove going so that the house doesn't freeze. The people in your life who stretch out a hand, year after year, decade after decade, maybe even after death . . . well, they are a miracle.

We went out for a fun meal at a friends' house last night, and then took a sweet stroll home through the neighborhoods. I may never get used to these genteel amenities . . . these evening walks; the social hive, gently buzzing; lights in the windows, clank of plates, steeple like a beacon.

The rain had stopped by the time we went out, and there's still no rain this morning, but it remains deeply cloudy, with showers possible all week. I won't be hanging laundry outside for the foreseeable future. But eventually, rain or no rain, I'll have to break down and cut the grass. A reel mower doesn't have much power over a meadow. And the weeds are becoming bold.

Yesterday I worked a bit more on my collection, but mostly I did Frost Place stuff and edited a short-story manuscript. Today will be more of the same, plus a Donne conversation with Teresa. The collection continues to distract me: I have a few niggling corrections on my mind, small changes to consider across the poems, words that keep reappearing, and should they? or should I iron them out?

I've put so much energy into the book, over these past few days. I know my concentration is beginning to flag, and I don't want to wreck anything. On the other hand, I always do my best work in these bursts of fervor. I should take advantage of every single moment. 

As predicted, I couldn't keep my hands off the manuscript yesterday morning, but eventually I did let it lie, and chugged out to the grocery store, and chugged back to clean the refrigerator, and otherwise tumbled back into my workaday life.

Still, it stays in my mind. I've already stripped it down by 10 pages, and several more poems may also go, or at least be radically revised for this context.

But it exists. It has a character, and it moves through its world.

* * *

Today I'll be back to editing other people's books, and working on Frost Place stuff, and reading Donne. T and I have a dinner invitation tonight, so later we'll walk out into the rain to spend a few hours with friends. 

The rain will keep raining. My poems will keep clanking around in my head.

In the meantime, yesterday's harvest: tender lettuce, first basil, a handful of prize-worthy red spring onions--

It's June 4, and it's 43 degrees and sodden in the little northern city by the sea. I stepped out this morning to take these photos, which don't at all capture the general chill humidity of the environs but do give you an idea of how even my backyard, so recently a barren plain, has transformed into a green monster.

 

The new shed is standing up to the weather, though, and adding its own intense greenness to the situation. 

* * *

I spent all of Saturday embroiled with my new poetry collection; and as of this morning, I have a complete manuscript. I know I need to strip out poems. The collection is too long--100 pages right now, including front and back matter--and I've already deleted many possible entries. But even though the current version is bloated, I continue to like the calendar structure, and I think I'm going to stick with it, at least as a first iteration. The book that became Accidental Hymn went through four or five transformations and titles, and that may happen here too. But possibly, in this case, I've figured something out.

And I've put in the energy, for sure. For the past two days I've thought of almost nothing else: walking past Tom in a daze, mulling and re-mulling and re-mulling. I daresay I won't be able to keep my hands off the book today, no matter how much I try to convince myself to let it stew for a while.

Funny how I spent months avoiding this job and suddenly it's become the only thing I want to do.

* * *

But what I ought to do today is get out of the house and go for a walk. It is very unlike me to spend an entire day doing nothing physical. I didn't walk; I didn't garden; I didn't exercise. I spent an entire morning standing in front of my desk staring at my computer screen and a stack of printouts. I spent an entire afternoon sitting on the couch staring at my computer screen and stack of printouts. I took a small break in between to make bread dough and put a rice pudding into the oven. Sloth plus carbs plus sloth. This is not a sustainable lifestyle.

It's supposed to be cold and wet for most of this coming week, and then on Friday I'm heading to Vermont for my nephew's high school graduation. I don't know what I'll accomplish on this book between now and then, but I'd best get myself off this couch and into the rain or I'll turn into a toad.

 . . . and just that like, we're back to slow rain and 49 degrees.

But the garden looks pretty happy, after an all-night soaking, and I'm pretty happy to be swathed in my snug bathrobe, drinking hot coffee and listening to water drip off the roof. I slept till after 6 today, which is exceedingly late for me, and I have nothing pressing to do, other than feed the neighbor's cat and read the poems of John Donne.

Yesterday's writing retreat turned out to be magnificent. Almost as soon as I settled myself into my chair and began reading through my stack, an idea rose into my mind . . . a calendar, a book of hours. What if I organized sets of poems into months, allowing each set to move nonchronologically through time and intention, so that the year would be a structure but history and imagination would be fluid?

This may or may not be the form I eventually settle on, but yesterday it made complete sense, and I spent hours organizing and slightly rewriting to work the pieces into that circle. It wasn't difficult to do: I have been writing so steadily that the seasonal shift is naturally evident in most of the poems. Yet because I'm constantly bumping historical invention against omniscient imagination against diary-like first-person speaker, I needed to find a way to make those shifts resonate with one another . . . and maybe this will be the key.

Whatever transpires, I am relieved and excited to have finally entered into full engagement with the task. And a rainy day is perfect encouragement for the project.

Yesterday was hot, and today will be hot-plus-thunderstorms, and then we're supposed to get cold drizzle all weekend. Such peculiar weather, though I am enjoying my summer skirts.

Today is trash day, and wash-the-sheets day, and start-organizing-the-next-poem-collection day. I shipped out an editing project yesterday, and did the housework, and dealt with Frost Place issues, and now I have no excuses. The day is mine and I need to use it.

So I'll undergo my exercise session, and do some laundry, and then start spreading out poems on the dining-room table. When I need a break, I'll read some Donne or go for a walk or work on revisions. It will be a tiny 6-hour poetry retreat, but maybe long enough to trigger real thought.

We've got a couple of days of heat ahead, and then rain will arrive and the daytime temperature will drop precipitously from the 80s to the 50s, and I'll be back to starting fires in the wood stove. And yet, apparently, it's June.

This morning I'll ship that novel I've been editing to the author, then turn my attention to housework, then work through an afternoon Frost Place meeting and an early evening meeting about a friend's poetry manuscript. And then salon writing tonight, and then my day will be done . . . though I'm hoping to slip out mid-afternoon and check out the new farmer's market that's opening around the corner.

How did I end up in the sort of neighborhood that attracts a farmer's market? Life is strange, and we accidentally bought the last affordable house, and it is the shabbiest one on the block. Still, there's no denying that this place has a teeny-tiny Park Slope vibe. Even a freak from the woods can see that.

And even in this cute enclave, the chores never cease. Now that my teaching jobs have ended, I have more time to do things like handwash all of the winter hats and scarves and make a blueberry pie. I also have more time to think about building a new poetry collection, and that is tomorrow's assignment: stop this emotive dilly-dallying and start laying out those poems on the dining-room table. I have a responsibility to myself. I have to figure it out.