Well, I've closed (almost) one chapter of this year's schoolwork. Next Friday I'll go up to Monson for the kids' show opening, but I'm done with schoolteaching for the nonce. It was a good year. After what were essentially two pilot seasons (thanks to Covid), I feel as if I finally was able to construct a full, useful, year-long plan that, with tweaks, I'll be able to keep leaning on in the future. And my students were stellar, the Monson Arts administration was hugely supportive, and I managed to figure out some personal solutions to managing my perpetual road trips.

The kids were full of emotion about their last day. There were tears. A year spent with poetry does that people. I, too, felt sad all the way home--the good sort of sad; a welling up of pride in what the students had accomplished; worry, also, about their future struggles. And I was tired. It has been a long, focused year of work--not merely the act of teaching but also the massive project of curriculum creation. Future years will be easier in that regard because I now have a template. But creating the template was an undertaking.

Today will be a this-and-that day. I may do no desk work at all. There's nothing crucial to accomplish, schedule-wise. I finished an editing project on Monday, so I'm on hiatus till the next project shows up. I do have a friend's poetry manuscript to read, and teaching-conference prep to continue, and Poetry Kitchen arrangements to make, and of course my own poems to work on. But I might give myself a day off from thinking. I'll go to the grocery store. I'll visit a friend in the hospital. I'll fidget in the garden, if it doesn't rain. If it does rain, I'll fidget with housework. I'll take a walk.

It's April in Maine, and the tulips are budding, and the radishes and arugula have sprouted, and a rough breeze rides in from the sea. I want to be in this story.