It is a dim and blue Easter morning in the little northern city by the sea.

I am not a churchgoer, so during the hoohah of Holy Week I am always on the outside looking in. When we were younger, Easter was a child-centered holiday--colored eggs and baskets and meals. But without the boys at home, it feels a bit accidental . . . a religious holiday that I recognize intellectually but that has no personal resonance beyond nostalgia and the pagan riots of spring.

This year, for some reason, I have even been feeling a little resentful about the Christian overtones of Easter: a little twitchy about tales of prayer and ritual; a little impatient with people's needs to publicly exhort and expiate. I do get weary of the emotional trappings. I start to feel as if I'm fighting my way out of a bag of wool. This is unkind and unreasonable of me, a teenage-style grumpiness; and to those of you who are believers, I apologize for my cranky agnosticism. I am happy for you. But, for whatever reason, I cannot endure organized religion, neither its comforts nor its cruelties.

Still, I love many of the things that Christianity has nurtured: Bach and the mystery plays and the scent of Easter lilies in a cold room. And T and I are together, and it is spring, and that is a good-enough reason for a holiday. This morning I'll marinate a leg of lamb in yogurt, oregano, and cardamom. I'll make lemon custards and a raspberry coulis. This afternoon I'll listen to my first Red Sox game of the new season. In between, I'll sit in my study and read the poems of George Herbert, the poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poems of Richard Wright. In between, T and I will walk out into the brisk spring day--a day of wind and crocuses, a day of whitecaps and gulls.

Finally, after days of rain and snow and ice and rain, we've got a sunny day in the forecast. I expect the ground will be too saturated for actual gardening, but at least I can get outside to pick up sticks and branches from the ice storm and soak in some spring air.

I'm behind on housework and groceries because I had to spend yesterday in the basement ballroom of the Holiday Inn hawking the wares of Monson Arts to members of the Maine Council on English Language Arts. But it turned out to be a pretty useful day: not just spreading the word about the conference among teachers but also confabulating with various teaching poets and writing organizations about how we can best work together with our resources to support literary education in the state. There's a notable lack of territorial defensiveness among the people doing this work. Partly that's because Maine is huge, so there's plenty of geographical need for all of us. Partly that's because our organizations have varied approaches to writing with young people, and that variety is useful and necessary. Probably next year I ought to do a presentation at this conference, not just sit behind a table. But that's a decision for another day.

I didn't expect to run into so many colleagues. I still tend to think of myself as a lone poet-wolf prowling around the edges of town. But that's not true. To be sure, Monson Arts isn't very well known among teachers around the state. This is the big reason we decided to set up a table at the conference: to promote ourselves as an educational resource. But all of the work I've done independently and through organizations such as the Telling Room, the Frost Place, and Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance has accrued. Yesterday I kept surprising myself. Who knew that I would be the person who kept saying, "Hey, I'd like you to meet . . . "? Who knew that the state poet laureate would launch herself across the room to give me a hug and say, "Dawn, I need to talk to you about this idea I have for a teaching project. . . . "? I always think I hate these kinds of events. I always think I hate the word networking. But that, in fact, was what yesterday was about. And it was not only useful but joyful.

When you're committed to the moral righteousness of your mission, networking and marketing are a whole lot less terrible. This sounds like such a pompous thing to claim, but it's true. I believe wholeheartedly in the value of the work I do with young people and with teachers, so why not forthrightly say so? It's not like I'm a snake-oil salesman. Still, publicity is always a challenge for me. I constantly fight against my engrained instincts: "extinguish your light," "don't show off so much."

At the same time, our educational team at Monson Arts is in an enviable position. This winter we were awarded significant funding for our high school studio programming--enough to keep us going for up four more years, if we receive some matching grants. Not only can we maintain our current programs, but we will able to do outreach work in schools, hire guest artists to extend our network, bring in teams from other arts organizations . . . The possibilities are vast, and the question now is how do we make best use of these resources? how do we best serve students, teachers, schools, and teaching artists, in the short term and in the long run?

I've never had this luxury before. Even in organizations with established reputations, our big dreams constantly collided with no budget. Yet luxury is daunting in its own way. Monson Arts has resources. We have a mission. We are also faced with various coiling tangles: idealism about art versus local indifference to art; students who long for opportunities versus students who scoff at opportunities; teachers who value artists as partners versus teachers who are suspicious about our intentions; administrators who want to foster connections with our programs versus administrators who could care less about the arts. And then there's the giant geographical challenge.

Still, it's an enviable problem. And it's exciting to imagine the future. I'm almost sixty years old, and I have to be realistic about how long I'll be playing a part in this story. I hope, though, I can help figure out a few things for the next person who comes along.

 It's still pouring rain out there, and I'll be rushing out the door into the morning . . . first to haul the trash to the curb, then to drive across town to help staff the Monson Arts table at the Maine Council of English Language Arts convention. I used to staff book-fair tables for CavanKerry Press, so I know how this works, but I'm not naturally good at face-to-face sales chatter, and I fear the day will be long. However, I will grit my teeth and do my part for my program. At least I don't have to drive far.

Otherwise, what's new? Editing, housework, trying to get things arranged for our upcoming travels . . . cat sitting, eclipse glasses, meal plans. This will be a working trip for me--I'll be teaching in Monson and editing in West Tremont--but Tom will have a real week off and is arranging to spend some of it on a photo project, so he's figuring out his parallel itinerary.

Our twice-yearly travels to Mount Desert Island have been really good for Tom and me. We get to spend time with a dear friend and help her out with things in the house and garden. We get to live in a little cottage we love, beside a little cove we love. We don't have to spend money we don't have. But also, because everything is familiar and regular, our daily lives can slip into this world comfortably. I find it easy to work in the cottage: I don't feel the pressure to be on vacation, to manufacture fun. And yet my sleeping and waking schedules relax, even as I putter through my obligations. And when I can step away from that work, Acadia is waiting.

The snow was waist-high in Monson, but by the time I got home yesterday, the accumulation in Portland had mostly vanished--just plow leftovers and shady corners--and the crocuses were blooming brightly. Now we've got two days of rain ahead of us, and the grass will keep greening and the buds will keep swelling, and by Saturday the city will have returned to spring.

My high school season is nearly over: just two more classes in April, then students' gallery opening in May, and we'll be done till September. It's been a very good year. I've learned a lot about organizing a progression of writing experiences, and I feel as if if the kids have stepped confidently into their final projects. They've put so much work into their writing, but I also don't feel any panic from them, and that's a good thing.

Today I'll be back at my desk, back at my housework. Probably I'll go out to write tonight. Probably I'll go for a walk in the rain. My sprained ankle is still bothering me a little, but at this point walking actually seems to help it. I hope I can get it back into shape before we go to Acadia in two weeks. Otherwise, my hiking hopes will be shot.

***

Fledgling

Dawn Potter

 

Once I was a child

ashamed of my small delights,

picking my nose secretly under the rhododendrons

 

as the scent of spring earth and old cement

spread like the chill breath of the underworld.

Ghosts shimmered on the broken doorstep,

 

rising through dust to become my own new skin.

I did not imagine a world without ghosts—

nor the end of wonder, dust swept away.

[from Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]

Spent last night dreaming about teaching, and now I have woken up to a day of teaching, and it's annoying to have already done such a bad job of it in my sleep. My dream brain would like you to know that I am a terrible classroom manager, can't stay on topic, forget the names of my students, have no useful goals, and am constantly overwrought. Hire me, please. I guarantee uproar.

I'm staying in lodgings I've never stayed in before. This time, for some reason, the management gave me an entire house to myself, and I feel like a pea rattling around in a barrel. Outside, the passing cars hiss over the wet road. The drive north was sloppy and nerve-racking--drizzle, with temperatures hovering around freezing for two-thirds of the route. But I arrived without incident, into this land of three-foot snow drifts, and now I am staring across the street into the construction site where the gas station stood two weeks ago, wondering why it has vanished. Ah, the mysteries of life.

Today my class will be whittling away at their final projects, messing around with stanza breaks and line breaks, paragraph breaks and sentence lengths. Meanwhile, snowmelt will dribble from the eaves, and grumpy robins will peck in the plowed driveways.

Lots of people are still without power today. Schools have stayed closed, traffic lights are dead at major intersections . . . We're so lucky that our own outage was relatively brief, but the ice storm did a number on the city and its surrounds.

Today I'll leave the icy metropolis and head north into snow country. Monson got roughly two feet from the last pair of blizzards, a classic turn of events in a central Maine spring. But the temperatures will warm quickly and the melt will commence. Already, my doughty tulips are peeking out from under the ice crust. They will not be quenched.

This week I'll be on the road for only one night; and only teaching my usual kids, not making any school visits--a much easier schedule than my last trip up north. My school-year travels are winding down: just a couple of classes left in April, then the kids' gallery opening, and I am done for the season. I do have a busy spring and summer ahead--a trip to the cottage on Mount Desert Island, weekend Zoom classes, a trip to Chicago, a trip to Vermont, co-teaching some teacher-training sessions, and then directing the big teaching conference in July--but my bi-weekly treks will be over until September.

Sometimes it amazes me, how much time I spend on the road these days. I am not the traveling sort; I struggle with transitions; I cling to habits. And yet here I am, heading toward the horizon once again.

What an ice storm! The city was a glittering ice rink, and every tree looked like a crystal chandelier. But there were power lines down all over the place, trees in the road, traffic lights out . . . a mess.

We're lucky to have our little wood stove. It doesn't heat the whole house, but it keeps the living room cozy. And yesterday I learned that, in a pinch, I could do some basic cooking on it: heat water, make frying-pan toast. The other thing I learned is that our freezer is very well insulated. Even after close to twelve hours without power, the sorbet held its texture perfectly, and the frozen meat stayed rock-hard.

Long power outages were a fact of life in Harmony, but this was our longest outage in Portland, and I had no idea how our infrastructure would hold up. In Harmony, we had no water but we had ample heat and a gas range we could light with a match. Here the water still runs when the power's out, but we have limited heat and no cookstove. Hurdles to clamber over, either way.

Fortunately, this time we didn't have to do too much clambering. Early in the morning, Tom managed to dig out his truck, and we skated across town to a diner for coffee and a hot breakfast. By the time we got home, our electricity was back on, and the house was back to normal. But lots of people in the city are still out.

***

This is an on-the-road week for me. Tomorrow I'll head north, to teach on Wednesday; and on Friday I'll need to help staff the Monson Arts table at the annual Maine English teachers' convention. (Fortunately for me it's in Portland.) In between I'll start a new big editing project and work on conference planning. I'm also hoping I can get back to my walking schedule. My injured ankle has been a drag; and though it's definitely mending, I'm not sure if it's ready for three-mile hike, especially given the ice. I hate not walking, though. Walks are such a good way to figure things out: to talk to myself, mull over poems or problems, but also to get outside of my own head into the world of birds and road grit and fire engines and dogs and middle schoolers loudly confabbing as they scuttle off to school.

Giant ice storm, no power since 9 last night, tons of branches down. This is just a drop-in post as I am hot-spotting off my phone. Talk to you tomorrow morning, I hope.

Spring snow. It's coming down hard for the moment but will eventually metamorphose into all sorts of mess. The coast is forecast to get sleet ice snow ice sleet rain rain rain rain sleet, plus heavy wind. So of course I lit a fire in the stove this morning. It's horrible-weather Saturday. I've got a recovering sprained ankle and no place to go. Why not spend the day on the couch watching the flames? Later I'll put a stew into the oven. I'll watch some college basketball and text about it with my kid. I'll read. The weather can do what it likes. I don't mind.

Yesterday I finished the second of my small editing jobs. I've caught up on my contest reading and prepped for Wednesday's class. I've answered emails and washed the floors and folded the sheets and stocked the pantry shelves with food. It is so pleasant to be sitting in my couch corner, on a dark and snowy morning, in front of this glowing wood fire, with my beloved upstairs asleep, with the cat curled up like a burger bun, with no anxious "I need to do . . . " doorbells ringing in my brain.

Last night, for dinner, I made a divine macaroni and cheese--a combination of gruyere, cheddar, and fontina in fresh bechamel sauce, with minced onion and lots of paprika. I'm still thinking about it this morning; it's funny how the memory of meals can stay so vivid. I often recall foods from the far past . . . my aunt's homemade ice cream, with fresh Jersey peaches pulled ripe from the tree; the plain but perfectly cooked green beans at the lonesome French restaurant on windswept Route One; the creamed spinach at the mobster steakhouse somewhere in Manhattan; the fried clams at a seaside shack that had five or ten sinks lined up around the edges of the dining room; a sun-warmed tomato eaten like an apple in my father's garden . . .

And now this coffee . . . black and bitter in its small white cup. I drink very little coffee these days. It messes with my sleep and my nerves. But I treasure my daily thimbleful . . . like my friend who smokes one cigarette a day, in the evening, outside on the porch. The ritual is all.

Somehow, I seem to have yanked something in my left ankle--a tendon, I guess. It was bothering me mildly all day yesterday, and this morning it is bothering me slightly less mildly, and I am annoyed. I do not like staying off my feet, and I doubt I will today. But maybe I'll at least try editing at my sit-down desk instead of my standing one.

Friday. Laundry, groceries, recycling, bottle returns. Cleaning the downstairs rooms. Editing an article and finishing a class plan. It's cold outside--23 degrees and windy: no working in the gardens. We've got another snowstorm on the way. I doubt the southern coast will see more than a couple of inches mixed with rain, but inland will get socked. If I were still living in Harmony, I would be blue. March is the cruelest month.

It was good to get out to write last night, to spend time with my poets. I don't think my drafts were worth much, but at least they exist. And I got a good haircut yesterday afternoon, quite short, so despite my wonky ankle I am feeling prettier than usual. It may be an illusion--at age 59 I should admit that it's certainly an illusion--but why not enjoy it anyway?

Friday. The end of a week at home, a week filled with busyness, stacks of desk work, house chores, my jaunt to Lewiston; poems everywhere, like dust motes or fleas. I'm rereading Wolf Hall, entranced again by Hilary Mantel's imaginative immersion into setting and voice. I'm washing dishes and pinning socks to the basement lines and folding towels and scrubbing out the shower and playing Elvis Costello's "Every Day I Write the Book" on repeat. Singing along. Thinking, How true it is.

Out a bit late at the movies last night, so into bed late, and now I am groggy and there is a lick of snow on the ground and the cat is horrified. "It is March," I tell the cat. "What else do you expect?" But he glowers and stomps up the stairs.

I finished one small editing project yesterday and started the other. I worked on marketing classes, and I corresponded with potential participants, and I emailed with my publisher about the production schedule for my next collection. He's aiming for early October, which will actually be a lovely time to bring out a book as I'll turn 60 on October 7. What better way to feel good about my age than to have a new book? Several people also reached out about scheduling readings, so that's good too. All in all it was a weirdly businesslike day, but I guess they have to happen once in a while.

Yesterday's primary editing project was a poetry collection. Today's is an academic article, so my brain will need to settle into new pathways. I also need to clean the upstairs rooms. I also need to prep for next week's Monson class. I also need to get a haircut. I'll probably go out to write tonight, which means I'll need to come up with a prompt and make something for our potluck--maybe Italian-style sweet and sour peppers. It will be a scatty sort of day.

I missed last week's writing session, for reasons of extreme tiredness. Still, despite the chore-like nature of my above description, I am looking forward to getting back into that routine. I haven't wrestled with a poem of my own for a couple of weeks, and that's a long gap for me. There's so much poetry in my work life these days . . . but my own poems wander in limbo.

***

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.

[from Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]

I had such a good day yesterday--first walking around Lewiston in a cold wind with my friend Dave, trudging along the river, gawking over the falls, winding through the square milltown streets, the sidewalks nearly empty, just an occasional man with dog, man on bench, man in doorway, but everywhere the cars driving away and away and away. And then we drove away ourselves, to the outskirts, where I read and chatted for an hour to residents at a retirement home. Maybe ten or twelve people showed up, more than I expected, really, and they listened and a few talked about their own memories, what it felt like to try to capture them, the longing to write something down, to make a mark. It was very moving, and I was glad to be there, glad to be talking to them, offering small suggestions or just listening as their own stories burst from them. The urge toward storytelling is so strong in our kind.

Today will be much quieter--back to my desk, to other people's manuscripts, to the murmur of my house, though tonight T and I will go out to a movie, an old Carol Reed flick whose title I can't remember. I haven't done much writing of my own lately, but I know it will come back to me . . . it always does. I never can quit this job: it demands my life.

Ways of being in the world: I've been thinking about that lately. How surprising it is to get old. How surprising it is to get a diagnosis. How surprising it is to suddenly glimpse oneself in the mirror of a watcher. The question: Is that what I've been the whole time? How terrible.

Or how funny. How brave. How curious. Our thousand thousand selves. Transparent and opaque. Invisible tap dancers in the upstairs apartment. Secret messages sent by imaginary carrier pigeons. Our own dear vulnerable skin.

 I woke up at 5:30 bewildered. No alarm, and somehow I'd managed to sleep straight through the night, which never happens, and I was dreaming I was changing a diaper, and I couldn't understand why Tom was up and getting dressed before me, which also never happens . . . the whole thing was a muddle, and I am still reeling from my long sleep, from my jolt awake, from the notable memory of that little warm baby in my arms, clean and sweet in his fresh pajamas.

Well, here I am, I guess. Awake and upright. Waiting (another strange thing) for Tom to bring me my coffee.

Now that I'm slightly less confused, I should focus on being pleased about this unusually solid sleep, but I am a little lonely for that dear vivid little baby, with his ginger crest and his goofball smile.

Ah well.

It's Tuesday, and I need to pull myself together before for my jaunt to Lewiston. I'm looking forward to the outing: a stroll around town with my friend Dave; then lunch and a reading. It will be a completely new sort of audience for me, and to prep I found myself pulling poems from each of my books--gleaning from the history of my own storytelling . . . an odd experience, but enjoyable.

Still, that little dream baby lingers. That dense heat of an infant tucked up against a shoulder. The wobble-neck; the newborn's ancient eyes, like a sea turtle's.

And here's my old nemesis Monday again.

But, to be fair, she arrives on the heels of a quiet weekend. Nor do I have to drive north to teach this week. So I don't really have any complaints about her, other than the 5 a.m. alarm.

Today I'll start working on the first of two small manuscript jobs: one's a poetry chapbook ms I'm advising on; the other's an academic article that needs copyediting. I have to prep for tomorrow's reading in Lewiston, I hope to do some work in the garden, and I want to mix up a batch of honey-vanilla frozen yogurt. I need to do laundry and endure my exercise regimen. I need to make Portuguese kale soup and an asparagus salad. I want to read some George Herbert poems and Anne Carson's "The Glass Essay." I'm hoping to pick up my new glasses this week, hoping to get a haircut, hoping that the clothes I've ordered actually fit me. Within the past week my best pair of jeans self-destructed, the knees went out in my only decent pair of dress pants, and I had to order new hiking shoes to replace the boots I'd worn down to skeletons. I'm a tattery mess.

On the other hand, I'm alive and cheerful, and I wore out the boots because I went on so many long walks in them, and those dress pants were at least 10 years old and they still looked okay on me. That's a small miracle right there.

* * *

I want

 

to skip up the street to buy bread I want to skip down to the DMV to read the eyechart I want to be the weirdo who skips up behind you in line at the movies and pokes you in the back and says What a beautiful hat I want to kiss wildly in public places I want to embrace trees and no-parking signs I want to swim far out into a deep lake and wear red lipstick and stomp in the mud I want to be loud and dizzy that big clumsy happy woman at the party oblivious to herself smiling a little and humming dancing her pigeon-wing shuffle alone in the corner and I want you to be there and I want you to be glad I came

(from Calendar by Dawn Potter [Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming])

Yesterday was downright springlike--50 degrees, a warmish breeze--and I spent much of the morning raking garden beds, pruning stalks, tidying my new leaf-mulch pile, picking gravel out of soil, and suchlike early-spring tasks. I set up the little cafe table and chairs in the lane, and even sat there for 10 minutes, until idleness made me cold. And then later T and I went for a walk along the cove, and in the evening we drove into town for a good dinner out with our neighbor. It was altogether a brisk and desk-free day, a day for stretching out those gardening muscles in the backs of my legs, a day for dirty fingernails and muddy old sneakers.

The rain will be back today, but the temperature has stayed warmish, and the uncovered beds will drink in the the gift. Yellowy spikes will green, red spikes will unfold, buds will swell, wretched maple seedlings will erupt in the millions. I'm sure I'll be wandering around outside in my raincoat, drinking it all in.

Otherwise, the day will toddle on. I've got to deal with the grocery shopping I never managed to do on Friday. I've got contest reading to finish, and I need to tidy my study for the coming week--a couple of small manuscript jobs ahead, a reading on Tuesday to plan. T and I have been working out the details of our April getaway week--how to fit our biannual trip to the cottage on Mount Desert Island around my workday in Monson, which also just happens to bump up against eclipse day. The Monson folks have invited us both to spend an extra night up there so that we'll be in place for the event. Central and northern Maine are in a fever about being in the path of the eclipse, and there will be tons of hoohah. It will be fun to witness.

One thing I will not be doing today is paying attention to Saint Patrick's Day, which has always just seemed silly to me--an excuse for loud guys to get day-drunk, an excuse for cooks to boil foods that taste better when they're not boiled. Last year I was in Chicago on Saint Patrick's Day and got to witness the hideous tradition of dying the Chicago River green, which pretty much put the lid on the holiday for me. Blech. But if day-drinking, cabbage-boiling, and green rivers are your pleasures, I hope you have much fun today. 

Saturday morning. The hands on the clock hover just before 6 a.m., and the gray hour is thick with fog. Yesterday was slow rain, chill and damp, and the weekend will likely be more of the same--if not actual rain at every moment, its imminence. Gradually the soil loosens, mud clots my shoes, yellow spikes green and become tulip leaves, daffodil leaves. Buds swell in the hearts of the hyacinths. The stems of the lenten roses rise from their winter sleep. The twigs of the Japanese maple glow red with life. My tiny homestead yawns and open its eyes under the drizzle.

On the ides of March, I bent over in the rain and harvested my first spring greens for dinner: a handful of tender infant kale, newly sprouted from wintered-over stalks; a slim bouquet of chives and green-onion stalks. Now, this morning, when I open the door to let the cat in, I hear cardinal song spilling into the blurry darkness . . . the notes are tart and sudden, unmusical, urgent. Early spring is a cut lemon, brisk and sharp and sour.

Yesterday I had a late-day zoom visit with Teresa, Jeannie, and Maudelle, and we talked about Elizabeth Hardwick's Sleepless Nights; Delle mentioned Anne Carson's "The Glass Essay"; Teresa shared pages from Alice Oswald's "Tithonus"; we wandered into speculations . . . about teaching, about sentences, about cities, about measurement, about time . . . It is lovely to meet with this cohort, to spend two hours or more just letting our four inquisitive minds bump up against one another. I had meant to go out to listen to music with another poet friend, and it would have been equally lovely; but another time, another time. I can't explain, after so many years of intellectual solitude, what it means to have these overlapping circles of creators suddenly become such an intense element of my days. And yet my friends from the north country: we drowned in motherhood together; we clung together in the harsh world of mud and water troubles and too much snow and sleepless babies and hormones and blackflies and scorn. No one will ever replace them in my heart. And yet my friends from college: we roiled in a fire of sex and unruly intelligence, and even today that fire smolders when we look into one another's eyes. And yet my sister: the one who was there from the start, hopping on one foot over the dew-wet stones.

I'm pleased to report that I have stepped back from the possibly-turning-into-a-zombie brink and am now just a regular woke-up-too-early human being. Thank goodness for yesterday, which gave me time to fall asleep on the couch at 9 a.m., subsequently take several more couch breaks, walk for a few slow miles, read and fold laundry and clean the upstairs rooms, play a couple of games with T, and make a slow satisfying evening meal.

I realized, as I was setting the table last night, that my cooking routine can be a big help in getting me back into a tolerable groove. I didn't make anything fancy last night--just black beans and rice, a beet salad with roasted pumpkin seeds, and a raspberry cobbler--but the process of putting each element together felt, for some reason, like a convalescence. I don't always have this reaction to making a meal; sometimes cooking is just a straight-up chore. But yesterday I needed it.

So here we are at Friday, a dark and rainy morning, the cat's 12th birthday, which he is celebrating by crunching up some chow in the dining room. The ides of March . . . "Et tu, Brute?" I coo at him, and he purrs, for backstabbing is his delight.

I spent all last night dreaming about teaching revision to kids, which shows you where my head has been these past few days. But the mundanity of today will blast that out of my skull. Today is recycling day, sheet-and-towel-washing day, downstairs-room-cleaning day. It's a day for grocery shopping and a zoom meeting and my exercise regimen. If the rain stops and the outdoors dries up a little, it will be a day for raking out another garden bed or two.

Yesterday I worked in the backyard beds and uncovered green everywhere . . . shoots, unfolding leaves, budding crocuses and scylla, nodding pale snowdrops. I'm not rushing; there's no hurry--a half-hour of raking, here and there; the slow revelations of thawing soil, and my body relearning its motions.

Waterloo

 

 

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

intimate.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, “To Hölderlin” 

 

 

Dawn Potter

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. 

[from Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]

And home.

It's been a heavyweight week, not least because I have been sleeping terribly. Even last night, in my own bed, sleep was fractured and uneasy; and after three nights of this, I'm beginning to droop. Thank goodness today I have some control of my own schedule. If I fall asleep at 10 a.m., so be it.

I've been thinking this week about authority in the classroom: what it means to construct a classroom environment within which liberty can exist. As in a poem, structure creates a frame for independence. They are a strange dichotomy, fences and freedom.

During lunch yesterday, one of my Monson students shared a poem she'd written in response to a school assignment, a typical honors-class sort--"write either a Petrarchan or a Shakespearean sonnet with strict scansion and rhyme and a precisely placed volta." She was irritated by the task, but also challenged by it, and the result was a solid traditional sonnet with a precisely place volta in which the speaker ranted about how much she hated writing it. The piece was concise and dramatic and one of the funniest poems I'd heard in a long time, and my entire class was rolling in the aisles.

This is an exaggerated example of form equals freedom--the poem version of flipping a teacher the bird while earning a solid A--and sticking it to the man is something most everyone longs to do . . . even when we find ourselves playing the role of the man. It's one of the many hard things about running a classroom.

Anyway, I've now got a few days off from wrestling with that conundrum. Today I'll catch up on housework, catch up on desk work, try to exercise myself into a better acquaintance with sleep. I may or may not go out to write tonight: I'm not feeling very coherent, but I suppose a nap could change that. 

After a long day of teaching, after a long drive back to my digs, what I needed was a walk and some silence. And so I trudged up Pleasant Street, along the lake, until I came to this slate quarry, one of several that dot the environs around Monson. The quarry walls climb up from the pond-hole below, and even the slag pile has a stern elegance under the dotted ice and the doughty trees that colonize it. And the sky was full of cloud-voice, wind tearing at twigs and old grasses.

It was a relief to be alone and out of doors, to listen to my boots trudging up the gritty road. A dog barked at me. A man in a pickup waved. And meanwhile the quarry--moonscape disguised as earth--delivered its sermon.

Waking up in the north country, readying myself for the long day. It's cold and windy here, with a crust of frozen wet snow. No spring yet, not like Portland, with its crocuses and budding quince.

I'm prepared for class--my stack of handouts, my plans--but also I'm not at all prepared. Anything could happen. Still, I'm feeling calm enough, and I slept passably, and in 45 minutes the store will open and I can drink a cup of coffee, which will make my prospects even brighter.

On another note: my upcoming Poetry Kitchen chapbook class is now full, and there are only two spaces left in the revision class. So if you're thinking about snagging a spot, you should move quickly.

And here we are at Monday again. At least I feel as if I've more or less recovered from yesterday's time-change hangover--a good sign, given my long week ahead. This afternoon I'll head north for two teaching days, two overnights in strange beds, and I will need all of the oomph I can muster. The added day will include a long early-morning drive, anxiety about a new setting, five intense sessions with kids who may or may not want to be there, and then a long afternoon drive back to my digs. Even after so many years as a traveling poet, I get nervous about such things. But I will get through it; the day will be fine, even exciting; I'll look in the rear view and be pleased.

And I've also got an adventure to look forward to. Yesterday, as my older son and I confabbed about a good date for my next visit to Chicago, he casually asked, "Thought of taking the train one way?" I had not, but as soon as he mentioned the idea, I was starry-eyed. Last Thanksgiving he and his partner took the train home and had lots of fun. It is a long ride--22 hours--and I can't afford a sleeping car, much as I long to spend the night in one. But J says that the coach seats recline well and are very comfortable, and I adore trains. The fun of a Boston-to-Chicago run--reading and writing and looking out the window and people watching . . . I'm so excited, and the view of America in May will be a delight.

So this morning I will buy my ticket, and as I am packing for my teaching week, I will be imagining my little nest on the train, the chug of the wheels beneath me, the curve of the tracks, the long whistle, the cities ahead and behind, the open country, the backs of houses, the scrub along the rivers . . .

I woke to rain and wind, fell asleep, woke again, and finally arose at the supposed time of 7 a.m., which everyone knows is a lie, especially the cat, and came downstairs and immediately lit a fire in the wood stove because clearly this is the kind of day that requires coziness . . . Sunday, a time change, puddle-lakes spreading up the front walkway, little streams trickling into the basement, the semi-frozen ground unready for the onslaught, and bursts of breeze spattering the windows, plus the comfortable knowledge that I already did the grocery shopping yesterday, that I cleared a few garden beds yesterday, that tomorrow I am heading north for a hard couple of days in classrooms and some lonely overnights in a strange bed, that today ought to be just what it is: pajamas and a friendly wood fire and a couch blanket and hot coffee and books, as the storm rages and T sighs in his half-sleep.

Last night's dinner was a good one: haddock fillets soaked in buttermilk, then rolled in a mixture of cornmeal and rice flour and sautéed till crisp; roasted baby potatoes and red onions; roasted tomatoes with balsamic vinegar; freshly made guacamole with seared shishito peppers, onion, lime, and cilantro; homemade mango sorbet. How I love to make a meal, and how I love this kitchen that T designed for me: compact but efficient, a room made for work. My two primary work rooms--kitchen and study: both small, both exactly what they should be: bright and clean and laid out for my particular use. And also, now, this morning's wood fire crackling in the stove. Hot coffee in a white cup, and this warmth and ease. And the rain: to paraphrase Updike, it lays a roof over the world.

* * *

Island Weather

 

Dawn Potter

Outside, in the sodden dark, the maples

rustle in a switchback wind.

 

I lie alone, restless and ungrateful,

too aware of my skin,

 

hot and cold, hot and cold, legs tangled

in the humid sheets. Into the room,

 

austere as plainsong, drifts an angle

of street-shadow, quivering blue on blue.

 

All night, the storm rattles on vents and panes,

on slow cars sluicing up the narrow hill,

 

their headlights painting streaks of rain

on my pale window, and still 

 

the torrent comes faster, faster—bluster, leak,

and squall. Frame shakes, glass moans.

 

How dim my blood-beat feels, how meek.

Once, I lined the sill with stones 

 

stolen from the sea.

Washed up. Washed down. Debris.

[from Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]

A wild cloud-sky glimmers up from the cove, unravels over the sleeping neighborhood. As far as I can tell, only the cat and I are awake to watch this eerie marvel, and the cat is indifferent. He is far more interested in the smell of the air--cold, thick; the odor of thaw, and of storm to come.

Early morning in the little northern city by the sea. The first crocuses are opening, dabs of bright poking up from the dead leaves. The tides quiver beneath solitary loons dipping and diving along the island shores. Upland, in the maples, a nuthatch beeps. A cardinal cries, cheer cheer cheer. 

And now a scrum of gulls elbows up from the marshlands, shrieking and bobbing at one another, then spreading suddenly into elegant formation. Above the neighborhood they soar like angels shouting the news.

What story should I tell? What about the tiny boy in yellow rain boots, quivering with excitement as a train passes by? What about the old dog, nose buried in a tuft of weeds?

In my house, the kitchen clock ticks. The cat clumps up the stairs, eager to climb back into bed. The wild cloud-sky has metamorphosed into flat gray morning.

The weekend looms, unplanned, undemanding. I have to buy groceries, but that's my only real obligation. Maybe I'll rake out some garden beds. Maybe I'll work on a poem. Nobody needs me. I have to invent the need in myself.

* * *

Self

 

The world is blood-hot and personal

Dawn says, with its blood-flush.

 

—Sylvia Plath, “Totem”

 

Dawn Potter

Look at this early-morning flock

of scraggly titmice, five or six birdlets hen-flocked

 

along the bare branches, feathers blown

inside out in the March wind, even crests blown

 

sideways, but every dime-weight body as firm on its feet

as Ozymandias. Their world is two feet

 

clinging to a twig, blood

racing against cold, blood

 

skittering in pinprick veins. The world is personal,

dawn says. And what love-scalded person

 

would think otherwise, what battered bird

would choose any fate other than bird?

[from Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]

The rain has paused. But there's more on the way for the weekend, maybe mixed with a swirl of snow, and the wind has swung around to cold.

Obligation Friday is upon me. I've got an eye appointment first thing this morning, plus it's recycling day and sheet-washing day. I need to meet with an author about her edited manuscript, and I need to clean the downstairs rooms. I have a poem draft burning a hole in my notebook and no idea about what to make for dinner.

Yesterday I did something I haven't done in ages, which was submit some new poems to journals. I read an Updike novel and thought about a William Matthews poem, and I did planks and squats and pushups and baked a cake for a party. But I didn't go for a walk, and I need to do that today, in this cold gray wind, in this March penance weather, all rushing air and road grit.

I'm feeling slightly blue, for no reason I can pinpoint. Maybe I'm just still sleepy or haven't yet conquered the laziness that underlies all of my dutiful bustle. Let's call my gloom The Drama of Being Ambitious; or, The Fate of the Household Poet. The narrative might make an excellent Restoration comedy. Or perhaps Moliere could rhyme something cutting about me.

The rain poured all night, and already the cat has been in and out through the back door three times this morning, shocked by the wet, compelled by the scintillating thaw. It is hard to imagine that winter will return this year, though I could easily be wrong. Winter has a way of digging in its claws. But everywhere in Portland tree buds are swelling and flower spikes are greening and patches of lank dead grass are beginning to shimmer.

Today's big project is to bake a lemon layer cake for tonight's poetic baby shower. Probably I'll also work on some conference planning, and I need to clean the upstairs rooms, and I'll keep chipping away at revisions and reading contest entries. Though, as always, I dreaded asking, I did quickly manage to coax two friends into writing cover blurbs for the new collection--a giant relief. Nothing makes me feel more like a wallflower at a party than having to creep onto the dance floor and ask somebody to write a blurb for my book. It's awful . . . though afterward, when the invited ones say yes, I am always jubilant, as if I've managed to evade the Minotaur in his own maze.

Anyway, that's over now, and I can concentrate on the manageable: fixing typos, correcting acknowledgments, compiling cover copy. All of my experience as a copyeditor does come in handy during the production process. I'm fussy about page design, fonts, Chicago Manual of Style recommendations, etc., but I'm also able to solve problems, and avoid them, and I know how to professionally proofread, how to mark corrections clearly, how to respond to a manuscript quickly and efficiently. And there's a satisfaction in getting to use these skills on my own books, not just in service of other people's manuscripts.

* * *

The rain is still thumping and rattling against the windows. The furnace is humming. The cat is drying off on a chair. 

I went on two long walks yesterday--one alone before breakfast, one with a friend before dinner. It is hard to stay inside in the spring. I am like the cat . . . I can't resist the scent of wind.

Here's a poem from the new collection, about that very thing--

* * *

Air

Dawn Potter

 

I could see nothing but air on air on

            all sides, nothing but warm impossible

space and the whole of the beast I was on:

That floats and swims and wheels and descends

            slowly as departure, a series of

            departures, into the breath of the rising

Wind.

 

—Dante, The Inferno

 

A sigh,

exasperation or sorrow. A breath, long

and slow; a wheeze, harsh as bricks.

The cough, below stairs, of a woman

 

who will die in a year; wail

of a newborn, who will die in ten.

A breeze over the sea, waves

as high as museums, waves as wide

 

as cornfields, waves as deep as the tale

Homer sang one night, while a goat

bled out in the courtyard and slave women

whispered in the olive grove.

 

A wind, whining across the plains, whining

against the empty, glittering tracks, against the first

railroad cars, against the raw new towns,

against the cities of industry, against the interstate

 

highway, against the steel walls of semi-trailers.

Battering against the penitentiaries and the churches:

a gale, scented with blood, with jasmine, with rot,

with mornings, with butter and bacon

 

and the snow-tracks of sparrows. A gust,

sifting the alleys of your ancient fortress, fingering

your stripped meadows, your pine forests, your empty sky.

Snare it, pin it to your breast, beg it to tear you away.

[from Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]

Yesterday was one of those days, common enough after I've been on a long streak of concentration, when I couldn't get much done. I did work on some class planning, and I did read contest poems, and I did vote, and I did do some house tasks, but I also spun in circles and drooped beside windows and lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling. I couldn't quite write; I couldn't quite drill into my own mind; but I also couldn't quite relax into pure play.

None of this is surprising, as I've been editing hard for many weeks. I've been teaching and planning and trying to sell classes. I've had a cancer scare. I've been worked up about this publication decision. Then I suddenly had a lighter day, and mostly what I did was wander around the house.

Maybe this morning I'll have better luck. I'd like to mess with revisions for a few hours. I'll be talking to Teresa in the afternoon about the poems of George Herbert, so that will be soothing. I need to make sorbet for a baby shower tomorrow. I'm determined to walk, whether or not it's raining. The next editing project will arrive one of these days, and next week I'll be on the road for two nights, teaching up north in a high school and then at Monson. I'd like to figure out how to be productive during this week's small hiatus. But yesterday my brain just said no.

 I'm happy to announce that Deerbrook Editions will publish Calendar, my sixth poetry collection, in fall 2024. Deerbrook was my first publisher, releasing Boy Land in 2004, so this will mark my twenty-year anniversary with Jeff Haste and his beautiful press. Deerbrook hasn't been my only publisher, but it's been my steadiest and most constant. It is rare to find publishers who are loyal to their authors, but Jeff certainly is. When he wrote to me over the weekend, asking about my collection, I realized how much I hate, hate, hate the terrible merry-go-round of submissions and rejections. Here is a man who makes gorgeous books, who cares about my work, who pays royalties. As soon as I said yes to him, a thousand-pound weight slipped from my shoulders. I'm full of gratitude. The manuscript is finished and the book will come out. I can focus my editorial attention on preparing it for press. And I can turn my creative attention to making new poems.

I'm fifty-nine years old, and I will never be a famous poet. I don't have an MFA network, I don't have any PR, I can't afford to apply for prizes, and I don't have the will to rush around the country making a name for myself. Still, what I do have is more than I ever thought I would possess when I was young and yearning: a list of published books, the friendship of top-notch writers who matter to me personally, and a teaching reputation. That's not a bad outcome for someone as po-biz wary as myself. Of course, humans are never satisfied, and I am always beating myself up for not being someone else. Ergo, this recent urge to submit my manuscript to more famous presses. As if, by magic, I'll suddenly spring out of the world I actually live in.

My poems are as good as the poems of more famous people. I work as hard. I have all of the fire and ambition. But my canvas is small. It is this little house on this little street. It is my classroom beside a lake in the Maine woods. A miniature life of letters. But it is still a life.

I slept till 5:30--very unusual for a Monday, but T has an appointment this morning before work and I reaped the benefits of not having to leap up before the crack of day.

The temperature is mild--above freezing with a whiff of melt in the air. Yesterday we basked in the 50s, and I spent a couple of hours in the yard, doing first-day-of-spring jobs: cleaning out garden boxes, setting up the cold frame, planting spinach; then picking up sticks, pruning roses, and tearing out the big broken rose trellis that blew over in one of our winter hurricanes. I checked spring growth. Much of the kale had wintered over, so I pruned back the dead leaves. I admired the garlic shoots and the green onions and the first snowdrop. Daffodils and hyacinths are up, and the scylla is starting to poke through. A few tulip leaves have appeared. Buds are swelling on the trees, and cardinals are romancing in the hedges.

It felt wonderful to be out and about on my little homestead. I'm longing to rake out garden beds and pin shirts to the line. I always get drunk on spring air. And then I always do something foolish, like plant too early or hang out sheets in the snow. Apparently I will never learn.

For the moment, I'm pleased to have a slow Monday-morning start, but soon I'll have to fork myself off this couch and into my workday. I've got editing to finish, class planning to start, stacks of contest books to read. I've got laundry to fold, laundry to hang on the cellar lines, wood boxes to fill, errands to run, meals to plan, poems to revise. Last night we ate lamb patties packed with garlic and onions and a fistful of my own dried herbs. We ate wild rice and roasted cabbage and marinated tomatoes and fresh raspberry sorbet. Tonight, who knows? Anything could happen . . . fish, lentils, omelets . . .  

I'm fizzy about spring. I'm fizzy about poems. I'm fizzy about the thought of placing my manuscript with a publisher and about not having to be on the road this week. I am like a cardinal in a hedge, hopping among twigs, singing my tunes, extolling the perfections of nests and eggs. Of course, this is before the cat shows up.

The drizzle started up yesterday afternoon, while we were strolling down Washington Avenue from the oyster shop to the poutine shop, and by the time we got home it had settled into a steady, leak-into-the-basement kind of downpour. In the back room Tom watched Japanese noir. In the living room I watched the wood fire and worked on a poem. And then eventually we reconvened to eat cheese and play Wingspan--a fine and lazy ending to a generally lazy day. All evening the rain ticked against the windows; all night long it drummed the roof. I woke and slept and woke and slept to the sound of rain, and I dreamed of being at my kitchen table in Harmony.

Though much of yesterday was play, I did read poetry collections, and I'll work through another batch of contest books today. For now, though, I am basking in the young warmth rising from the registers. Black coffee steams in a white cup. A jar of daffodils suns on the kitchen counter. Tom is burrowed into the deep Sunday-morning repose of the full-time construction worker, and a wet cat noisily crunches chow.

Outside, in the darkness, the fragrance of spring rises from the sodden soil. When I open the back door, a small wind wraps around me like a watery veil. What's new, what's new? whispers the ash tree, and a possum scuttles into the shadow of the neighbor's garage.

The salt Atlantic laps at the docks of this small city teetering at the nation's northeastern edge. Up the hill, a little plain-faced house squats on its skimpy plot beneath the brittle bare arms of towering maples. Inside the house, two aging lovers and their difficult cat; inside, books and pantry shelves and folded cotton sheets. It is the most unspectacular of happy endings. It is one brief tale in the story of a world that is collapsing into ashes.

Yesterday was a flurry of laundry, bathrooms, floor washing, groceries; plus writing and sending out a newsletter, responding to emails about said newsletter, posting class info on social media, solving invoice issues, and other such unnatural chores; plus squeezing in some revision time; plus taking a long chattery afternoon walk with friends; plus diving into a bunch of other piddly tasks I've forgotten to remember. It was a day crammed with event, and I was glad to sit down to a beer and a big bowl of shrimp and asparagus linguine at the end of it . . . even if that meant I had to make the linguine.

But now it's Saturday, and I slept in till after 6, and the heavy housework's done, and I don't have anywhere I need to go, and Tom's not sick anymore, and I am looking forward to an unstructured and undemanding weekend. I do have to read contest entries, and I do want to haul my cold frame out of the shed and set it up in one of the garden boxes. But otherwise the weekend winds can waft me where-e'er they list. I might toddle down to the fish market. I might convince T to go out for oysters and poutine. I might take a nap by the fire. Anything could happen.

Yesterday brought me another bit of good cheer: a friendly and unprompted invitation regarding my as-yet-unplaced manuscript Calendars, which has been floating for several months in the contest aether. So today I need to make some decisions, though I'm pretty sure I know what I'm going to do. A bird in the hand, as they say.

People are signing up for my classes. A publisher reaches out to ask for my collection. Friends text me and say, Let's take a walk! Things are not going so badly in my neck of the woods.

Yesterday I shipped my big editing project to the author; and though I still have a few bits and pieces to finish up on it, I'm going to take today off from editing and catch up on some planning, poetry, and house things. It's Friday, it's thirteen degrees, it's March, and I am caught up in a swirl of obligation . . . teaching, editing, contest judging, housework--and spring is looming, with all of its pleasures and chores. My little city garden makes so many demands. How did I ever manage to raise children and manage a 40-acre forest homestead--goats, pigs, chickens, extreme firewood, a giant garden, canning, cheesemaking--plus edit and write and teach? I must have been nuts. Or young.

Outside, a lopsided moon beams over the little northern city by the sea. Inside, the furnace grumbles, lamplight casts circles of shine and shadow. The tidy shabby chairs glance modestly toward the fireplace. The books on the table cough lightly to catch my attention. In a stone jar, the rosy hyacinths foretell their own death.

Today will be filled with unremarkable things--clean sheets and clean floors, five words on a page, a cold wind.

I send my messages ahead of me.

You read them, they speak to you

in siren tongues, ears of flame

spring from your heads to take them.

--Denise Levertov, from "Poet and Person