It's been such a good weekend--for my state of mind, certainly, and in other ways too. If Sunday was play-day, then Monday was big-job day: before noon I moved the entire wood pile from shed to cellar, and Tom stacked it all. This is why I do my exercises. Wood is heavy, repetitive work: all bending and lifting and throwing and wheelbarrow-shoving, hour upon hour, and I finished the morning feeling strong and capable and happy, all of my bones and muscles in order, my wind strong, my heart steady. Also I felt useful, which is not a thing that a poet often feels.

So that's part 1 of the big job done. Next weekend, we'll have part 2 to deal with: getting a pile of green wood into the shed. But for now, when I stump into the cellar with a laundry basket or a bag of potatoes, I can rest my eyes on the beautiful tight stacks, breathe in the perfume of forest and soil, imagine blizzards and cold rain . . . because, in the plain Harmony phrase that stands in for months of brute hard work--cutting, hauling, splitting, stacking--we got our wood in.

Today, however, I return to the life of a housewife-intellectual (read intellectual with as much irony as you'd like, though housewife is plain fact). I've got to grocery-shop and such this morning, and then this afternoon I'll be zoom-meeting with friends for our inaugural test kitchen/"let's talk about . . . " session. A month or so ago, I told you about this idea of Teresa's--to convene a group of four poets, all at about the same level of professional self-confidence, to talk about poems, poem-related things, goofy ideas, research struggles, whatever. Each of us will bring one issue to the table, and then we'll have at it. I'm so looking forward to this, so hoping that it can bring me out of my revision-workshop malaise. I'm excited to hear what the others will share. I myself plan to focus on "disconnect between speaker's voice and primary character's voice."

So, autumn! Welcome! I feel fizzy and fit, after weeks of anxious slog, and I'm in love, and I'm curious and excited, and I'm wearing summer dresses every chance I get.