Last night, just before I headed out to my writing group, the news came in: guilty on all 34 counts. Oh, the poets were giddy! I'd made a pound cake for the gathering but immediately renamed it felony cake. My son texted, "What if they make him do community service?," and the poets burst into raucous laughter and launched into imaginary scenarios involving latrines. I know, I know . . . the apocalypse still hovers. But just for an evening, it felt really good to stick a fork into the most indecent man in America.

And now, Friday: sunshine and soft weather ahead. Given that I have to teach all day on Sunday, I'm taking the day off from paying work. I'll ride my bike, do some housework, get out into the garden, read about the Brontes, work on poems. I've started wandering through David Ferry's translations of the odes of Horace.

Yesterday, at the farmers' market around the corner, I bought some flower seedlings while I was waiting for the knife sharpener to restore the kitchen knives I'd brought him. Then I sat down in front of the retirees' ukulele band ("Wagon Wheel," "Love Potion #9," etc.; five songs later,"Wagon Wheel" starting up again) and read Roman poetry. The modest human comedy of the neighborhood: a cold spring breeze and city young people gamely eating ice cream and country young people tenderly hawking homemade vegan sausage and goat-milk soap and baby boomers strumming the simplest possible chords on their ukuleles.

What does the most indecent man in America know about the small ways in which we plain humans bump up against our neighbors? What does he know about sitting outside in cool sunshine, a book of poems open in his lap, as two gray-haired women lift their treble voices in sudden sharp harmony? The wry stab of elegy, the silly sweetness . . . Wallowing in his cesspool, what does he know of such things?

So much in bloom--indigo lupines, pale buttery iris, a pure white azalea; purple globes of allium like strange vegetable space ships, spiky bachelor's buttons, and the first white rugosa rose. The wasteland between our shed and the neighbor's garage is adrift with tall lavender and white phlox, sowed by the wind, I suppose, because the patch didn't exist two years ago.

Sunflower and nasturtium seeds have sprouted; dahlia tubers are spiking new growth; tiny carrots and beets spread young arms to the sun.

Peas are climbing their trellis; the first bean leaves are unfolding; radishes are nearly done but arugula and baby lettuce are entering their glory days, and the first yellow blossoms peek out from among the tomato leaves. Blueberry flowers are loaded with bees; hummingbirds hustle past me in the gloaming.

The tiny homestead purrs like an engine, insects and birds and squirrels and plants abuzz all day, and all night long the plants shifting and stretching and unwrapping themselves, as opossums prowl along the fence line and June bugs batter the window screens.

I am writing and I am reading, and I am riding my bike in the new mornings, and pinning shirts to the damp clotheslines. Yesterday I finished an editing project, wrote the introduction for a faculty reading at the teaching conference, talked to Teresa about poems. Today I'll edit an article, edit a poetry collection, start writing out plans for the conference writing retreat . . . I'll clean the upstairs rooms and read about the Brontes and fidget with a poem draft and mow the backyard. There's so much work to be done, and I am doing it, I am doing it, I am doing it all, but the enterprise is fragile and fraught, like juggling duck eggs.

My first day back at work was a productive one. I've now nearly finished the short-story collection I'm editing, and today it will become one more job to cross off the to-do list. That will leave me with just a handful of short editing jobs in hand as I enter the downslide into conference planning, which is exactly what I need.

After a cool and rainy Monday, we are back to high spring. Yesterday evening was all soft breeze and raucous birdsong, and T and I lounged outside in the back garden eating fishcakes and salad, drinking rose, talking desultorily of this and that, as night slowly slipped into the sky. What a good idea it was to buy a plain, inexpensive outdoor dining table! Our back garden has taken on new luster. We idle over our meal; we watch a pair of Carolina wrens flit from fence to roof to fence; we listen to the liquid oratorio of the robins. Green surrounds us, intense as a wet painting; and yet, you country people enduring black-fly season: no biting insects. This we can hardly get over: we keep marveling at the fact that we're sitting outside in the evening without being devoured.

This morning I'll go for a bike ride before breakfast. I'll hang laundry on the line; I'll look at the poem I'm puzzling through; I'll finish editing the story manuscript, and then I'll revise some teaching-conference plans. After lunch I'll sit outside and talk to Teresa over the phone about seventeenth-century poetry. I'll spring-clean another kitchen cupboard, and I'll weed a garden bed, and I'll salt-rub a steak for grilling. I'll pick herbs and radishes from the garden. I'll hug T when he walks in through the door. We'll play cribbage; we'll listen to baseball; we'll talk about possible cover photos for my new collection. We'll cook our dinner outside and we'll eat our dinner outside and we'll reluctantly trudge back into the house to wash our dishes and we'll fall asleep to the whir of the fan. Summertime. 

 . . . and so the holiday recedes behind the hills. 

I woke this morning to T's alarm, to T beside me in bed, to regular weekday 5 a.m. life. I made the coffee, I let out the cat, and now here I sit, alert and quiet, as rain-sodden first light glimmers flatly through the laden maples.

I spent nearly all of yesterday working on what had become a complex and challenging poem draft. It was absorbing work, but by late afternoon the draft had found its shape, and I was ready to let it rest. Between bursts of writing, I read, and walked, and scrubbed out kitchen cupboards, and harvested salad in the rain. In the early afternoon T sent me a text from the bus: "Looking forward to seeing you" . . . a plain little mash note that made me glad all of the rest of the day, because what is sweeter than knowing that the person you want to see also wants to see you? I lit a wood fire and made dinner in anticipation of his arrival: prepped haddock for baking, roasted kale, boiled red potatoes for salad, simmered a pepper and tomato sauce. At 7:30 I fetched him home from the bus station, and we spent the evening in chatter--drinking rose in the kitchen as I baked the fish, catching up on the Brooklyn gossip, the Portland gossip, and then early to bed as rain clattered and sighed.

Today, back to work for both of us. I'll be at my desk, editing a short-story manuscript, catching up on teaching obligations; in the interstices, dealing with groceries, laundry, the minutiae of the household. He'll be installing finicky trim in a mansion-under-construction. Our days climb forward, stair upon stair. We separate and the return, separate and return. It is a love story.

 Today will be a rainy day, and I am happy to see it.

Yesterday's spatter turned into sunshine--another gorgeous day for walking and yard work and lolling with a fat book and a glass of tea. I mowed, cleaned up the front flower beds, and transplanted sunflowers and cosmos. In the boxes in the lane I thinned and transplanted beets, escarole, and carrots. In the afternoon I worked on a poem, listened to baseball, read and read and read, and in the evening my neighbor and I walked out for dinner and chatter.

So a rainy day is just fine. The tiny transplants will be delighted, and I am happy to retreat to house things today. I need to sit down with the poems of Richard Crashaw--next on the list in my seventeenth-century-poets reading project with Teresa. I'll spring-clean the kitchen while listening to afternoon baseball. I'll keep working on my poem draft. I'll get out my mat and do some yoga and core exercises. I'll concoct T a welcome-home dinner, and then this evening I'll fetch him home from the bus station.

This has been exactly the weekend I needed: busy and productive; also restful and unstructured. Lots of exercise--walking, bike riding, gardening--spelled by lots of loafing with books and cold drinks; even some wallowing in bed. Now I stare through the windows into the rainy garden and I see cultivated soil, bright young plants, clipped grass, everything compact and tidy and welcoming. When we bought this house, with its hideous bleak yard, I imagined a kitchen garden, a cottage garden, a shady grove. Seven years later, they have come to pass, thanks to the work of my hands. I feel a lot of pride about this--the pride of making something from nothing. The pride of creating a pleasure garden. Much remains to be done. But as with poetry, a garden is never final.

And I wrote this weekend too . . . I pulled together a poem draft that is an open door to something else, a shape asking for more . . . and that is so interesting too. I see a form in what I've made, and what this form tells me is that it needs to intersect with another form. Maybe, this morning, I will begin to discover what that other form will be, what language it will require.

Importantly, there were many things I did not do this weekend: edit anyone else's manuscript, do any teaching prep. Originally, stupidly, I'd intended to make today an editing day. But then I saw the light. No. Take your three-day weekend, Dawn. Take it. During my travels to Chicago I edited and taught. During my travels to Mount Desert Island I edited and taught. Ugh. Why is it so hard to protect my time? I need to get better at that.

Meanwhile, my kid is in Asia, looking at this guy--

I woke up to discover rain, fallen, about to fall. Rain in pause, rain past and future, a surprise in either case because no rain was forecast. I'm glad to see it, though, because things have been a little dry around here--not destructively so, but I've had to water the vegetable beds and consider dragging out the backyard hose.

I spent the first half of yesterday morning in the sunny vegetable garden--harvesting and then pulling out the wintered-over kale, weeding, spreading compost, cultivating, then sowing chard, second crops of arugula and cilantro, dill, fennel, kohlrabi, nasturtiums. I spent the second half in the shady backyard--weeding among the perennials and shrubs, pruning dead wood, noting what's spreading, what could be moved, what the insects have been eating, what's glowing and what's pasty-faced.

Then I changed clothes and went out to buy myself some dinner. Braving the hellscape that is tourist season on the downtown waterfront, I threaded my way onto the wharves, not running over any pedestrians, not even one. I had a hankering for soft-shell crab, but none were to be had at the fish market. For solace, I bought half a pound of picked crab--a giant treat because picked crab is not cheap. And I discovered that the fish market was also selling fresh fiddleheads!--my first of the season.

One of my eternal griefs is losing my Harmony fiddlehead patch. (Losing the chanterelle patch is another.) So when I find them for sale during their brief season, I glut myself, even if my refrigerator is full of other vegetables I ought to be using up . . . such as the pounds of baby kale that I'd just harvested. However, fiddleheads trump everything.

I had a long evening of cooking ahead of me, but first I came home to write, pulling a short draft-blurt from my notebook and carving it into rough shape, then rereading the notes I'd taken while riding the Lake Shore Limited, searching out the notes I'd taken in Monson during the eclipse. In the kitchen I pondered the draft and the notes. On the counter, the fat Bronte bio lay splayed alongside The Joy of Cooking. Barefoot, in a long summer skirt, in a sleeveless summer shirt, I puttered back and forth between the two: cooking and reading, cooking and reading . . . With the Red Sox losing in the background, I heated and cooled the base for honey-vanilla frozen yogurt. I read about Branwell working as a railway clerk in the wilds of the mountains. As the ice-cream freezer growled, I cleaned fiddleheads and roasted a tomato with fresh oregano. I mixed up a batch of mayonnaise. I read about Charlotte falling in love with the idea of Belgium. I boiled the fiddleheads and tossed them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I assembled ingredients for crab cakes--a dab of the mayonnaise, an egg yolk, parsley and green onions, bread crumbs, seasoning. I read about Anne, lonely in her governess schoolroom; about Emily, oblivious to the press of duty, working out the rhymes for a Gondal poem. I fried up the cakes.

And then I ate, ensconced on the couch in the back room, setting aside the Brontes and entertaining myself with an episode of The Rockford Files. Crab cakes, fiddleheads, roasted tomato, a summer beer, followed by honey-vanilla frozen yogurt. A small meal on a plate, but it sure made a lot of dirty dishes.

I thought afterward about how much time I'd spent cooking for one person. I also thought about how that didn't feel weird to me, though maybe it should have. Most of the single people I know spend very little time on their own meals, even the ones who like to cook. But I think part of my bent toward concocting elaborate meals involves the ritual: cooking (often while reading) is how I make the transition from evening into night. It's not "cooking for Tom" that interests me so much as the rite of creation. Though, also, of course, I love to eat, and I love to eat with him, partly because he is such a pleasure to cook for--he notices his food, he loves to try new things, he appreciates the work that goes into a meal, both the growing and the constructing, and he says so.

As for the reading: I have always done this, ever since I was a kid and got yelled at for accidentally dripping brownie batter on library books. It's like biting my nails. I'm not quitting now.

After a few summer-dress days, the temperature has dropped and the humidity has lifted; and when I stepped out onto the stoop with the cat this morning, the cool washed over me like lake water. Yesterday, as I was vacuuming the living room, I considered carrying the wood boxes into the cellar and declaring the heating season over. But I decided not to, and now I'm glad. Summer is slow to stake its claim around here. On a dank June day, when the air is drenched in mist and Maine feels like a Scottish island. I'll be glad to strike a match.

It's almost 6 a.m. and I am drinking my half-pot of coffee in a quiet house. Early light streaks the windows. Outside the robins and cardinals shrill urgently; there is desperation in their song . . . time is short, time is short, time is short.

I spent Friday morning at my desk, editing a short-story collection, then working on the details of a presentation I'll be giving at the teaching conference. In the afternoon I cleaned the downstairs rooms; I polished the dining-room table, scrubbed the fireplace bricks; I made up the bed with fresh air-dried sheets and pillowcases. I picked greens and herbs from the garden, and for dinner I concocted a rice bowl using a dab of leftover hot and sour Thai soup broth, a dab of leftover chicken broth, freshly cooked arborio, a soy-marinated egg, and a fistful of chopped herbs and green: spinach, arugula, kale, garlic chives, green onion, mint. It was gorgeous and it was stunningly delicious and I was extremely pleased with myself.

This morning I may wander out to the fish market to see what looks good for a one-person meal project. I am always on a mission to do real cooking, even when I'm by myself. I may go for a bike ride soon. I may heat up leftover rice and try to concoct a breakfast version of last night's success. For the moment I am pleasantly undecided about everything.

I did a lot of reading yesterday, in and among my chores. I'm still immersed in the massive Bronte biography--which is a study of the entire family, not just the three sisters. So I'm learning a lot about their father Patrick, a lot about their brother Branwell--my vision of the family dynamic has become far more nuanced, which pleases and interests me. I weary of the Romance of the Doomed Woman stereotype.

And yet when Charlotte writes this to her friend Ellen: "Human feelings are queer things--I am much happier--black-leading the stoves--making the beds and sweeping the floors at home, than I should be living like a fine lady anywhere else" . . . When I read those words, I recognize how bound I am, also, as a imaginer, as a compiler of words, to the work of my hands, to the bonds of my place.

Home, amid its obligations and isolations, was the root of the Brontes' creative life. Some of us understand this.

I've just returned from dropping T off at the bus station. And now, at 6:15 a.m., the day stretches out before me. Sheets grind in the washing machine; windows welcome in birdsong. In a few minutes I'll step out for a walk--wandering through the mild city streets, through the cemetery, green and blossomed, speckled with solemn, and comical, and pretentious, and heart-tugging monuments, stony messages from citizens who once, long ago, stepped out, on a morning in spring, into this provincial seaside town.

I will miss T, of course. I adore being with him. But there's something lovely, too, about these four days ahead of me . . . four days spent tending no one but myself. I'll work, I'll cook, I'll walk, I'll idle, I'll sleep. I'll do nothing earth-shaking--nothing, really, that I couldn't also do with T in the house. Nonetheless, there will be a spaciousness--as if I'm stretching out alone in a big bed, arms and legs splayed like a starfish.

I spent much of yesterday honing plans for next weekend's Poetry Kitchen class. Today I will start a new editing project and do some teaching conference prep. I'll clean the downstairs rooms, hang sheets and towels on the line, maybe do some gardening, though I've got the whole weekend ahead for outdoor things.

My brain feels busy but settled: secure in itself, confident. In the zone, as they say. I feel as if a big poem could be gestating, though I have no idea what it might entail or when it might spill out. Four days ahead of me: a draft could erupt at any time . . . I could be overrun . . . in thrall . . . bewitched. I am waiting to see. I am hoping. But I will not rush myself.

In the meantime, the air is filled with the scent of lilacs. Irises are unfolding in the garden. I have filled vases with fresh flowers . . . bluebells, yarrow, chive blossoms. The world is good enough, for now.

I slept last night like I'd been felled, and now I sit, peacefully un-groggifying myself, as robinsong shrills through an open window. Last night was the first night of open windows downstairs, the first night of grumbling old humidifier, the first night of coming home from a movie and breathing in the fragrance of doorstep summer night. As Tom fiddled with his key, I suddenly remembered the scent of my New Jersey grandparents' concrete front porch, the smell of gravel and mowed grass and Salems and the sharp odor of the dusty little carnations--we called them pinks--that edged the stairs.

Last night was the first evening of dinner outside--braised chicken salad, a mason jar of ice tea, slabs of new bread, and the cat sprawled voluptuously beside us in the grass.

And today will be another summer's day.

Yesterday I finished the memoir I was editing and sent it off to the author. This morning, after my walk, I'll turn my attention to prepping for my upcoming zoom class; then do some planning for the teaching conference, clean the upstairs rooms, start weeding the backyard gardens. Probably I'll go out to write tonight.

I've got stacks of new editing lying in wait, but they can lurk until tomorrow. I need a few hours to focus on class planning. There's so much prep involved in the teaching conference: individual sessions to design, reading intros to write, collaborations to work out, marketing to do, plus supporting participants, supporting faculty, supporting the Monson Arts staff. I have to drag out all of my mother-skills to run this thing.

But we are doing well, registration-wise, which delights me. In our first year in new digs, our numbers are as good as last year's, and many of these people have never taken part in the conference before. It's an excellent sign.

By the way, I've suddenly had one space open up in my upcoming Poetry Kitchen class: "From Draft to Dream." Maybe you'll consider joining us? Here's the class description:

From Draft to Dream: Revising into the Unknown

Dawn Potter, instructor

Maybe you've got a notebook full of first drafts that you can't bring yourself to touch. Maybe you're looking for a way to bring your existing writing into new territory. Maybe you struggle to trust your own judgment about revision choices.

This day-long class is for anyone who is looking for new ways to step into existing poems. Via prompts, readings, and conversations, we'll experiment with structure, language, narrative, voice, and other elements of poem construction. At the end of the day you'll have a sheaf of new revisions and a toolbox of ideas to put to use in your writing practice.

Date: June 2, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. ET,  on Zoom

Cost: $75

Class size is limited to 12 participants. 

Inservice teachers will receive 5 hours of professional development credit. 

Register here!

Today is the day: hot weather in Maine for the first time this year!

Already the birds are making an intense racket. A few started carrying on well before daylight, as I discovered when I woke at 1 a.m. into a thin summer darkness. I lay tossing and grouching over some dumb issue that would not concern me at all during real waking hours, and a bird shrilled, another responded, as if they, too, were restlessly arguing with my stubborn brain.

So far I've had exactly the week I've needed--catching up with desk work, catching up with yard work--and I hope my bad sleep hasn't shoved a stick into the spokes. I've made good progress on a memoir I'm editing, started catching up on teaching prep. I fixed the trimmer and then used it to tidy up edges and corners, weeded the Hill Country, transplanted an unthriving rhubarb plant . . . There's still much more to do, inside and out, but I'm on a roll, and these open days have been a huge help.

Little things too . . . getting a tire fixed, remembering to buy Mets-Sox tickets for September, setting up my phone so I can talk to my kid when he's overseas, contacting the chimney sweep, contacting the tree guy about a problem maple . . . these picky little chores take so much time. And I have yet to tackle spring cleaning, yet to start hand-washing winter woolens, yet to vacuum up the spilled soil in my car . . . 

And now T is awake, rattling around upstairs, clumping downstairs, reaching for my hand as he walks past. And now the cat pops up beside me, proffering a quick meow and a nose rub before sliding off into his next sneaky cat project. And now I think of laundry baskets and the unmade bed, breakfast dishes and broom-sweeping; and now I think of the Bronte sisters, bent over the kitchen table, penning their elaborate, ecstatic, wild stories in tiny, cramped, horribly spelled script; pausing to peel potatoes, to snipe at one another, to pet the dog, to speak to their aunt. Home as the center of the imagination. Imagination as the center of freedom.

 

Yesterday's harvest, left to right: garlic chives, chive blossoms, parsley, French breakfast radishes. Not seen: a pan of mixed arugula, lettuce, and spinach. Dinner was a new adventure: hot and sour Thai shrimp soup--delicious and flavorful, floating with herbs, and also extremely spicy. On the side, salad, French bread, and French breakfast radishes.

It's been a slower-than-usual weekday morning: T will be working at a different job site today so doesn't have to get up as early. And the cat, uncharacteristically, also decided to sleep in. So by the time I wandered downstairs to make coffee, pale daylight was already streaming through the windows, a small wind twitching the maples, the neighborhood's tame beauties on display . . . lilacs, the first irises, the old-fashioned square front porches, children's bikes and backyard fences, the trembling fat new leaves.

Yesterday I spent the morning editing, the afternoon running errands--grocery-shopping, getting the slow leak in a tire fixed--then did some weeding and mowing, took down the laundry, pottered in the garden. I finished my Trollope novel and returned to the Bronte biography. I scribbled notes about class planning; I talked on the phone to my mother and a son. I did my exercises in fresh air. I ate breakfast and then lunch outside at the new backyard table. I'm beginning to step into summer life, when the transition between inside and outside blurs, when every dinner arises from what I discover in my front yard at four o'clock in the afternoon, when the evening soundtrack is baseball on the radio and light lingers among the sea-gray clouds as I climb into my bed.

Am I making poems or not? I always seem to produce them less intensely in the summer, partly because I'm so distracted by the out-of-doors, but also partly because I am drinking in my own subject matter. This is the world of my writing: the body at work and at wonder . . . in the garden, under the clotheslines, beside the kitchen's open window. I am a household poet. In the summer I feel, so intensely, the intersection of my physical and creative lives. My eyes are overwhelmed with visions, my hands rough with soil and dishwater, and the cadences of Marvell and Herbert are a barely audible tuneless hum, ever-present, like breathing.

Monday morning. Yesterday afternoon I finished teaching the final session of a three-part class, so I am stepping into the new week with one less plate in the air. Ahead of me is a long open week at home, a long open weekend at home. I've got tons of work to do, but nowhere to go and not many scheduled obligations, and that is a good thing.

After two damp and chilly days, the weather is forecast to get hot: reaching the mid-80s by Wednesday, a first for Maine this year. Maybe we'll be able to eat dinner one evening on our new outside table; maybe we'll be able to sleep with windows open all over the house.

The mantle vases are cluttered with late narcissi, chive blossoms, golden spurge, bluebells, candytuft. In the late afternoons, I walk into the garden and fill bowls with radishes, arugula, kale, green onions, bouquets of herbs--sage, oregano, mint, parsley, garlic chives, basil. In the house I wander from window to window, my eyes feasting on bloom and green. And yet last night I lit a fire in the wood stove. A Maine spring is multitudes.

I'm hoping for a calm, orderly, patient sort of week. I have so much editing to do, so much class prep to do. The garden is endlessly demanding. I have reading to accomplish; my own poems to write. The house is in dire need of spring cleaning. Slowly, slowly, I pick my way through the thorns.

 I assumed I'd be writing to you from borrowed digs on Mount Desert Island this morning. But yesterday evening, after the memorial service, T and I looked at each other and said, "Let's just go home." The drive to the island is three hours each way, so this was work. But for whatever reason, we both wanted to wake up at home. I suppose that's because I'm still scrabbling to pull myself together after my Chicago adventure, plus prepping to teach today. On T's side, not only has he been working hard, but he'll be leaving for NYC on Friday. Suddenly, it seems, we didn't have the wherewithal.

Fortunately I'd done the driving on the trip up, so at least we were able to share the work, though poor T had the worst of it, what with rain and growing darkness. But baseball on the radio helped, and by 9 p.m. we were walking through our door, much to the joy of the cat.

And so, this morning, I sit gratefully on my own couch, drinking hot black coffee, looking out at the dim wet morning. The rain has stopped, and the garden glows with green and blossom . . . velvet soil, twining clematis and peavines, long spikes of onions, carpets of arugula, newly planted seedlings relaxing into vigor . . . a beautiful morning to be a young Serrano pepper or Brandywine tomato. It's cool--as it was yesterday at the memorial service: a classic spring day . . . lush, chill-breezed, spats of rain. "Fucking Maine," said the widow, with love and exasperation. Everyone was freezing, but what did we expect? I read aloud a Hayden Carruth poem, visited with a poet I admire but hadn't seen in forever, hugged the dear widow, talked with kind strangers, drank half a glass of red wine in a weedy dooryard, cried. Ah, sorrow and joy and awkwardness. Ah, icy feet in sandals that I knew would be a mistake but decided to wear anyway. Such are the puzzles of life.

A day like this perhaps explains our sudden drive home. Sometimes--not often--T and I are the same person.

Peppers, eggplant, and basil planted. Garden watered. Grass mowed. Tulips deadheaded. The weediest bed weeded. That's as much outdoor work as I could accomplish yesterday, but it was good enough. This morning I'm headed downeast; home tomorrow, either before I teach or afterward. I long to stay home but stasis is not in the cards.

The morning sky is gray . . . rain on the way, and the air is cool and damp. I am thinking about flowers and poems. I am thinking about spring-cleaning my kitchen. I am thinking about how to be a friend, about how to wander lonely as a cloud.

Yesterday, during our monthly confab, Jeannie and Teresa and I ambled into conversation about transitional moments. They are both turning 70 this year, I am turning 60, and all of us are hyperaware of walking through time's door. We talked about archives; we talked about ambition; we talked about stamina. All of these concerns niggle at me. What does it mean to be an artist in the late stages of her vocation? When do I allow myself to step back from obligation, or step into a new one?

And yet I am so powerfully full of life.

I sit here recovering from an upsetting dream in which Nazis were pursuing me through a huge barn, though in the midst of it I was mostly terrified for Tom, not for myself.  The miasma of nightmares clings  even as their details fade; I wonder how they can have such power, even in blur. And I wonder what lesson about fear I'm supposed to be relearning.

Well, it's good to be awake in my unfraught house, amid coffee and daylight and ordinary time. Yesterday I worked all day at my desk and in the garden--editing a memoir; then planting tomatoes, a ninebark shrub, a clematis, flats of zinnias and marigolds. Today I'll do more of the same: digging, watering, weeding, mowing; erasing, inserting, suggesting, explaining. I've got an afternoon meeting with my Poetry Lab compadres; I'll invent a chicken and fresh herb combination for dinner; I'll get some exercise--maybe a bike ride this morning instead of my boring winter mat regimen. I'll try to figure out the logistics of our weekend.

Meanwhile, my bad dream leaches into my day thoughts.

I'm still rereading Trollope's novel Framley Parsonage, the small volume that I brought along on my Chicago adventure. I'm thinking about student manuscripts . . . I'm thinking about upcoming next classes. On paper it looks like I've had vacations. In real life I've been working straight through them, as I'll be doing this weekend too. It's hard to catch up with myself, hard to remember everything I need to give.

But then I got this email from one of the poets who'll be writing a blurb for my new collection: "I. Love. Your. Book. It makes me both weepy and giggly and really awash in the sweep of how you compress so much vastness (time, history, the lineage of poetry, ideas of self) into such rugged, original poems. Gah. You’re the boss, and I miss you."

Yes, it's flagrant braggadocio to share this with you. Every Presbyterian cell in my body tells me to crawl right back under my bushel basket. And I will. But I was so pleased, and jangled, and embarrassed, and relieved to get this note. All of these messy responses to praise . . . why is it so hard to be gracious? Because of course I am longing to hear the very words that make me wince.

I spent yesterday doing housework and laundry (and editing). Today I'll be in the garden (and editing). Temperatures are now warm enough for tomatoes, basil, and such (hurray!), so I've got to acquire those seedlings, then lug them home and plant, then weed flowerbeds, fix the trimmer, etc., until I lose interest/become exhausted/finish. It's ridiculous how much time it takes to keep this tiny plot in shape.

Other things on my mind: choosing what poem I'll read for Curtis's memorial service on Saturday . . . most likely something by Hayden Carruth; deciding whether I'll be going out to write tonight (probably yes); working on various iterations of class prep; trying to get my head in order after being away from all varieties of work for most of a week. The time-zone switch between Portland and Chicago isn't major--just an hour's difference--but I still feel like I've fallen through the daylight savings portal. I can't quite tell what's supposed to be happening when.

Well, life will level out again soon . . . though not immediately. This weekend is going to be a giant flurry--driving hours and back for the memorial service, with three hours of zoom teaching jammed into the midst. It's not an ideal situation, but neither is death. So I am not going to grouse.

And spring is so soothing to my mind. I wander from window to window, staring out into my lovely gardens, so fresh and bright and full of promise.

I miss my boys dreadfully. I am glad to be home. I am overwhelmed by obligation. I take off my shoes and dig my bare feet into the green grass.

I left Chicago so early yesterday that I was unlocking the back door of my own house by 1 p.m. I guess that's why people fly instead of taking the train, though every attribute other than speed is significantly more unpleasant. Still, as flying goes, the trip was smooth--no delays, an aisle seat instead of a dreaded middle one, and the strange noises the plane was making were not a harbinger of doom, though for a while I wondered.

I was still Dramamine-sleepy when I got home, so I spent most of the afternoon easing back into my usual briskness. But I did do a bit of mowing, a bit of vacuuming, a bit of watering, and quite a lot of laundry. It was a beautiful day in Portland--not summer-dress weather, as it was in Chicago, but still lovely for sitting outside and admiring the new blooms and leaves.

Today I've got lots of house and yard work to do, lots of groceries to acquire, lots of desk work to start puzzling through. And of course I'll be mourning Alice Munro, hands-down my favorite contemporary writer, whose influence on my own writing has been massive and complex. Contemporary writer no more. She sits by the side of Milton now, and already she is looking him up and down and making personal comments.

A lonely day. Hugging my son goodbye and flying away into the east. And now there will never be another new Munro story.

Yesterday I never left the compound . . . I dawdled with the young people in the morning, set up my zoom situation and tried to get my thoughts in order, and then taught all afternoon while J and H continued with their courtyard and sidewalk planting projects. By the time I finished, the temperature was nearly 80 degrees, and the soft air was reaching out to greet me. First summer skirt day, first sandals day, first idling till after dark in a sleeveless shirt day. The little courtyard now has hanging planters, some soil bags filled with vegetables and flowers, hanging lights, a small table . . . nothing fancy or unusual, but all charming. It's sweet to have a little oasis in the metropolis.

Today H has to go to work, so J and I will head out to the botanical gardens on our own. It's supposed to be another warm day but with rain coming in during the afternoon and then, tomorrow, a precipitous temperature drop into the 50s. But I will be on an early-morning plane, flying home.

Yesterday ended up being a bit slower than we'd originally planned. We postponed the botanical garden outing till Monday and instead decided to work on garden beds here. J and H live in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, in a carriage house tucked away from the street. The geography is difficult to describe, but basically it comes to down this: J owns a compound composed of two buildings. He rents the two apartments in the front one, lives in the back one. He is linked to the street by a European-style walkway that snakes between high brick house walls, and the two buildings center around a small interior courtyard. J and H want to turn the sidewalk tree patch into a perennial garden and do some vegetable container gardening in the courtyard. So we went to the garden store for plants and containers and to Home Depot for wood, and then, while J built a frame for the streetside bed, H and I planted tomatoes and peppers and basil and marigolds. There's not much space in the courtyard, and the high surrounding walls affect the available sunlight, but it's a warm little microclimate, well protected from wind, and I think the plants will do well.

Late afternoon, we tidied ourselves up and caught a bus to Chinatown, ate some ramen, and then crammed ourselves into an el car and headed to the baseball park. The White Sox have had a terrible season so far. Bleacher tickets cost $11 each--minor league prices!--so we splurged and got good seats: $30 each and directly above home plate. The view of the game was terrific, and miracle of miracles the White Sox won. It was a really fun evening, gorgeous weather, a beautiful view of the city from the top of the stadium, a cheerful crowd. We were all so glad we went.

This afternoon I'll need to hole myself up in the back room and teach, while J and H finish the sidewalk garden on their own. The temperature is supposed to be close to 80 degrees today, and I'm looking forward to wearing my first summer skirt of the season. Ah, May . . . what a loveliness.

It is 7:16 a.m. Central Time--8:16 Eastern Time--and I have just now woken up. This is shockingly late rising for me, especially in a strange bed, but I slept like the dead last night. The overnight on the train may have been fun, but it wasn't exactly restful, and it seems that my body demanded some payback. So here I am, lolling.

We've got a busy day planned--making a frittata for breakfast with various leftover bits of deliciousness from our dinner out last night, then heading to the botanical garden, followed by an evening at a White Sox game.

The weather in Chicago is divine, full-on spring . . . we walk down the street, past a mariachi band playing in an open garage, past little children and their mothers trotting home from Mother's Day tea at school, past pigeons scuttling and little dogs barking and tulip trees glowing with cones of pink flowers. And here I am, too, striding along with my young people. It is so sweet.

Unedited Notes from the Lake Shore Limited Adventure

I write to you from a hard seat at the Concord Coach Lines bus station. Uber driver was named Jimmy, and his taste in music is Christian rock. For a while I thought I might have to pay $40 bucks for that ride but fortunately I only paid $7. Uber is a racket. But Jimmy was very pleasant, despite his music.

 

On the bus to South Station, watching guys cram luggage into the very crowded Logan Airport bus in the next dock. Such a nice feeling not to be going to the airport. Ahead of me an old husband is picking his ear in exactly the same way my dad does.

 

Sat for an hour at South Station which is a mess of construction and very confusing. Suddenly realized how sad it is not to have those rattly arrival and departure boards. Electronic screens are no improvement though at least we can hear the public announcements now: they don’t sound like they’re emerging from a soup can wadded with wool.

 

Too bad my window is so dirty. I’ve noticed that there is also a dog passenger

 

Things not recommended: seatmate who FaceTimes noisily with friends. Fortunately she is getting off at the next stop.

 

Best view so far: central Massachusetts bog with heron. Leaves are further out than they are in Maine, but not by a lot. I haven’t yet done any writing but I might once my seatmate leaves. I just need to hope she isn’t replaced.

 

The Berkshires rising up so suddenly, like big lumps in a big carpet.

 

Now a scene: young woman somehow manages to miss her stop in Pittsfield and is marching up and down the aisles screeching into her phone I HAVE TO GO TO FUCKING ALBANY YOU HAVE TO PICK ME UP THERE NOELLE DO YOU WANT ME TO SLEEP ON A FUCKING PARK BENCH? Everyone else stays quiet, but we are all thinking the same thing. It is easy to tell what we’re all thinking: This is your own fault, girl. Also you’re making it very hard for us to feel sorry for you.

 

Coming into Albany: trailer parks and fields and strange massive barns not at all like New England barns. Lilacs are fully out; hardly peeking in Maine.

 

Really enjoying the fun of creating a 24-hour nest. I do hope I can keep this pair of seats to myself for overnight. But if not, I’ll manage. For some reason I am hearing the dim few notes of a harmonica. Somebody’s phone presumably. But it adds ambience.

 

Now here we sit in Albany for an hour waiting for the NYC train to meet up with us. That’s where all the sleeping cars are apparently, and the old people ahead of us are very excited to get into theirs. I am a little bit jealous but also this is fine. The dog passenger is disembarking. He was a very good boy but did make a lot of extra luggage for his person. I had enough to carry without carrying a dog too.

 

Now the woman in the seat across from me is spraying disinfectant all over the seat of the nice young person who’d been next to her. I really do not think that nice young person was squishing disease into the vinyl seat. However, we all have our private worries.

 

I think this stop in Albany will be boring. The view is quite dull—lots of concrete, a parking lot and parking garage, some red-faced Amtrak guys milling around pointlessly. I am glad I got my beer before Albany as now the café car is closed, and the pleasant effects of beer will help make the boringness of Albany more supportable.

 

Too much phone talking on this train. People are so dumb.

 

Schenectady: giant building that says NY Lottery. Can the lottery require so many rooms?

 

The sky on the way to Utica is flat white flocked with funnels of gray cloud, like wallpaper decorated with elegant tornadoes. The train is rocketing fast. A happy old couple in front of me are drinking beer and eating pretzels and looking forward to Cleveland. The woman behind me has been talking on her phone for an hour and shows no sign of stopping. And there goes the train whistle. We whistle a lot on this train. Every once in a while we pass a stately sort of Rip Van Winkle house—stony and square and obstinate. Soon it will be dark and I will have nothing to report on except for passengers. But I am drinking hot tea, which is enjoyable in itself.

 

The night was not at all bad—uncomfortable, like camping is, but I had two seats to myself all night which helped. I woke and slept between station stops, and moved around in my cramped nest. The rocking and rattle of the train was marvelously soothing.

 

At Buffalo I sat up and gazed out into the city without my glasses on, and the lights were like Christmas lights, hanging fatly in the darkness, and a fragile sleep lay over the train, the breathing and snoring somehow delicate and beautiful and rare, as our train rushed us into deep-night Ohio.

 

Woke up in Cleveland to blink at an Amish family fussing around in their new seats: grandparents and a little girl, maybe 8 years old, and they all seem excited and happy to be heading toward Chicago.

 

I sat up for good at daybreak and watched thin horizontal clouds float over the flat countryside. The hedgerows were nothing like the New England thickets, but broad coronas of trees with gaps among them so that light shown through.

 

And then we crossed a long bridge over a river, what river?, with a suspension bridge silhouetted against the sky and water rippling like pen scribbles. And then we were in Toledo. 

I'm  overwhelmed by the responses to "Piers Plowman" . . . I'm so glad you liked it, but I'm also surprised, red-faced, taken aback by the outpouring in my email and elsewhere. 

Feelings: how awkward they are; how silly and spotted with acne! I will lug my bulky sheepishness onto the Lake Shore Limited and hold it in my lap as the train speeds through spring. 

I still can't quite believe I'll be doing this: riding a train alone, halfway across the country.

This time tomorrow I'll be in Ohio or Indiana, writing to you as the cars rocket down the tracks, my hair scrunched up weird from sleeping in my seat, with a notebook full of jottings about fellow passengers and the back sides of cities and the strengths and weaknesses of my picnic planning. I'll see you there--

Last week I submitted poems to journals for the first time in months, and this morning I woke up to discover that one of them has just been published. Instant gratification! It's part of a new project I'm working on, temporarily called Famous Works of Literature, which borrows other people's titles and uses them out of context. This poem, for instance, is titled "Piers Plowman" but is not a retelling of Langland's original.

Though I do procrastinate on submitting work to journals, I'm pleased to watch a new piece float into the world now and again. But I'm certainly not producing finished poems speedily. Nor do I know if this infant project will ever become a coherent collection. Possibly, these poems will morph into some other unity, maybe under entirely different titles. I'm not worrying about it; really, I'm enjoying the indefinite nature, enjoying not being in a rush. Between my last published book and the next one, to be released this fall, there will be only a two-year gap in copyright date. When I stand back and consider this, I recognize how crazily I've been writing and revising during the past few years; I see the obsessive pressure I've been putting on myself to create and refine. So taking a breather (of sorts) is not a bad thing. Of course, the parenthetical "of sorts" acknowledges the ironic nature of my kind of breather. I'm still ridiculously busy--with teaching, with reading, with editing, with home responsibilities--but at least I'm allowing myself to readjust my writing production and I'm not beating myself up for laziness.

Tomorrow I'll embark on my adventure--catching a morning bus from Portland to Boston, catching a noon train from Boston to Chicago. I've still got many loose ends to untangle--concocting my picnic meals, writing to-do lists for T, dealing with last-minute laundry, digging my tickets out of emails, plus fiddling around with my usual desk and yard chores. It will be a cool day, with rain--a day to drink hot tea and concentrate on the details. Also a day to be happy about my poem.

Even in my dreams I've been juggling desk work, errands, travel prep, class prep, gardening, laundry . . . I wake up at 4 a.m. with to-do lists streaming like banners from my subconscious. I'm not anxious at all about this coming trip; I'm wholeheartedly looking forward to it. Nonetheless, I've got a thousand things to remember to finish, find, clean, dig, and pack; so when the springtime birds start screeching in the near-darkness, I'm instantly screeching right along with them.

Yesterday started off cloudy but gradually morphed into gorgeous. And today, apparently, will be gorgeous from beginning to end. First thing, I'm getting my hair cut--a fine start to a fine day. Who wouldn't want to embark on an adventure with a fresh haircut? Then I'll spend the rest of my day sifting through my various tasks and trying to be outside as much as possible.

Packing for this trip is an interesting challenge. I need to bring as much of my own food as possible for my long day on the train: that's three meals and snacks. I need to carry along a few comfort items for the train--travel pillow and blanket, simple toiletries--plus my reader/writer/time-filling materials: laptop, notebook, novels, crosswords. I need to save room in my suitcase for the teaching materials (participant manuscripts, webcam) I'll use to run next Sunday's zoom class from Chicago. I need to pack clothes and shoes that address the variability of spring weather and the likelihood that I'll be walking for many miles plus going to fun big-city places where I ought not to look as if I've just rolled out of a sleeping bag. I need a hat to deal with the sun, a raincoat to deal with the rain. And I need to be able to cram all of this stuff into a small rolling suitcase, a small backpack, and a not-too-large-or-heavy picnic bag.

You see why it's taking me an entire week to figure this out?

In and among such distractions, I did manage to do a bit of gardening yesterday--planted two new perennials in the backyard: a golden spikenard in a shady corner and an azure baptisia (also known as false indigo) in a sunny spot. I bought a few bags of seaweed mulch and spread them over the new lily bed out front and around the Japanese maple bed in the back. And I ate my lunch at the new table in the back garden, ensconced cozily among flowers and laundry.

I also cooked a meal that made me very happy . . . what I'm calling tagliatelle carbonara alla spring in Maine--a delightful, if nontraditional, concoction of bacon, white wine, eggs, and a big handful of parsley, garlic chives, and green onions fresh from the garden, tossed with flat noodles, served in blue and white bowls, and garnished with violets. It was a lovely sight on the table. 

Yesterday was so busy and un-Sunday-like: yard work all morning, teaching all afternoon, then dinner making, laundry folding, and all of the petty catchup tasks. But it was a good day, too. I mowed and trimmed, hung up the hammock, assembled the new outdoor table, planted dahlias, scrubbed moss off the house siding. And then, after lunch, I spent three hours with my new class of manuscript makers, moving them from anxiety into the first stages of confidence, which is always a satisfying progression. And then there was dinner: oven-fried haddock, farro, caramelized fennel and onions, and cherry tomatoes in vinaigrette, with fresh mangoes for dessert--an easy-to-make yet handsome meal and a fine punctuation mark on a long day.

I'm very happy with my spring gardens this year . . . just enough rain, no sudden temperature swings, no groundhog, and no particular trouble with insects yet. Here on the Terrace, the garlic is coming up well, as are the herbs along the perimeter, and I've got tomato stakes, the bean tower, and the cucumber trellis set up, ready for planting when I return from Chicago.

The little houses I brought back from Mount Desert Island--which my late friend Curtis had found on the side of the road, and which his wife gave me as a memento of him--have settled into their new neighborhood.

And the violets are in their modest glory, clustering among paving stones and thyme.

In the sidewalk garden my son calls Lantern Waste, white candytuft and golden cushion spurge are bright against the tulips and the peonies are coming in strong. Flowers give me such happiness.

This morning I'll undergo my exercise regimen, put in some editing time, and work on my George Herbert homework, and in the afternoon I'll devote myself to errands and garden matters. I'm eager to try out the new outside table; I need to mulch the new sidewalk lilies; I've got to do a round of weeding. We had steady rain last night, and today the temperature is supposed to reach 70 degrees, so I expect the yard to explode into high spring before my eyes. 

I got home midday with a trunkful of plants from Angela's garden--mostly lilies but also bloodroot and a big sedum. As a result, I had to finally overcome my procrastination and start digging up the ugly strip of grass between sidewalk and street. I've been wanting to get rid of the grass since we moved in, but I've had too many other garden jobs to keep me busy. Plus, nursery stock is expensive, and the sidewalk plot is a tricky spot--always under onslaught from dogs, snowplows, and the Public Works Department--and it requires plants that will be hardy under difficult conditions, that won't flop too much over the sidewalk, that will spread thickly enough to be their own weed control, and that won't break my heart when a guy with a jackhammer shows up. I've got a lot of street frontage (for a city yard), and not enough plants to fill the entire strip. But Ang did give me enough for a good-sized patch, and so I settled down to the chore: I broke a big chunk of weedy sod, hacked the tangled lily plants into plantable bunches, and set them into their new roadside home.

This morning I've got to hang laundry, mow grass, catch up on some other stuff that I haven't remembered yet, and then this afternoon I'll be in class, leading the first session of the current round of my chapbook seminar. Meanwhile, T is going to a Sea Dogs game with a friend, and I am a little bit jealous as currently the top-three Red Sox prospects are playing in Portland, and I know they won't be in Double-A for long.

Last night we had a treat for dinner: T brought home soft-shell crabs from the fish market, the first of the season. So I soaked them in milk, then dredged them in flour and fried them up, and we ate them with yogurt and caper sauce, alongside roasted potatoes with green onions and a big salad of baby kale, charred shishito peppers, cherry tomatoes, and fresh mint. I love these first big handfuls of garden herbs . . . the new onions, the chives and garlic chives, the first sprigs of mint and parsley and sage. And the wintered-over kale is still going strong.

In just a few days I'll be heading down to Boston to catch the Lake Shore Limited, and I am getting more and more excited. I don't know why I'm looking forward to this adventure so much, but I'm glad I am. . . I so often fret about traveling, but I'm straight-up thrilled about this trip. I keep pondering over all of the little details . . . how will I manage my toothbrush on the train? what books will I bring to read? how many meals do I need to pack for myself? where should it all fit into my backpack? And then once I get to Chicago, J has all kinds of fun planned--good food and a trip to the botanical gardens and maybe a White Sox game, and we're going to figure out his gardening situation, and we're going to hang out and tell jokes and admonish his misbehaving cats.

For now, though, I need to keep my head in the present tense: yard chores, class prep. And afterward, in the late afternoon, maybe I'll treat myself to a bike ride, and then I'll cook up some haddock for dinner, watch the evening clouds roll in, and imagine summer. "Durer would have seen a reason for living in a town like this." I don't even love the poems of Marianne Moore, but that line is always, always in my head.

I'm lying in bed in Wellington as a mourning dove coos on the roof over my head. Sharp spring air ripples through the open window, and I am in no rush to get up, to do anything at all.

Yesterday's gallery opening was packed with parents and grandparents and siblings. So many people came out to see our young people's work. I tell you, when I watch guys in motorsports sweatshirts and "Don't Tread on Me" caps tiptoeing respectfully among poems and paintings, I know something in this world has gone right.

And then, on our way home, Angela and I saw a moose! . . . a beautiful young cow browsing on the edge on the road. She slipped into the brush as I stopped the car, but turned to watch us, and lingered there for a few moments as we cooed and admired. It had been a long time since either Ang or I had seen a moose--even in the north country they've gotten rare, thanks to tick infestations--so this was special.

Of course, because the homeland is a crazy place, even as we were swooning over our moose sighting, we were discussing whether or not we were likely to drive into a police roadblock. A carload of guys apparently held up a convenience store at gunpoint and then drove like mad up a Wellington dirt road, straight into a pond, got their SUV stuck on a beaver dam (!), and vamoosed into the woods, with K-9s in hot pursuit. Local scuttlebutt says they've since been caught, but, boy, it's a thrill a minute up here.

Light drifts in earlier and earlier every morning. A few weeks ago the sky was black velvet at 5 a.m., but now it is streaked with blue and gold, the houses and streets and flowers subdued but visible, the streetlamps already beginning to blink out.

I sit here in my couch corner with my small cup of coffee, with my head full of the poem drafts I scribbled last night. I sit here and listen to the gulls screech up from the cove, listen for the cat to come yowling to the door, demanding to be let back inside. This has been, on the whole, a quiet week, but the busyness starts again today. This afternoon I'll head north for the Monson Arts kids' gallery opening, then home tomorrow, teaching on Sunday, a flurry of desk and house and yard work next week, and then my adventure west.

Last night's writing group was a relief. I wrote three drafts to three prompts, and all have promise. It feels good to have a notebook full of material as I get ready to embark on my train voyage. The question is: what books should I bring along to read? The massive Barker bio of the Brontes, which I'm currently immersed in, would be a terrible burden to tote around the cities. I need to find a few slim paperbacks--but not too slim as I'll have many hours to fill with reading. My sons have a running joke about how to calculate the number of books I'm liable to bring along per day of travel. But my new little backpack will only hold so much . . . which is one of the reasons I bought it: to curb my book-lugging tendencies. Say it again, Dawn: I do not need to drag my library through the streets of Chicago. 

Well, for the moment I just need to focus on today's packing; on today's housework and yard work and desk work. I'll go for a walk this morning, I'll wash sheets and towels and clean the downstairs rooms, I'll do a of bit yard work if there's time, and then I'll drive north. I'll be staying with my friends in Wellington tonight; I'll sleep to the sounds of owls and peepers. It will be my last visit up north until late June, and I'm looking forward to the spring woods, to conversation, to gardens and open windows. 

I slept hard last night and am now attempting to come to grips with being upright and awake. Funny how the more sleep I get, the more sleep I want. But, alas. The alarm is inexorable. No wallowing. Get up, get up.

Well, anyway it's Thursday, and I like Thursdays--paycheck day, writing group night--even if this one will feature a trip to the dentist. Once again, the little northern city by the sea will be cool and rainy, but I've got plenty to keep me occupied under cover . . . editing a novel, working on poem drafts, running errands, cleaning the upstairs rooms, listening to afternoon baseball, cooking something or other to carry to the writers' dinner.

Yesterday my Brooklyn son spent most of the day concocting Julia Child's recipe for cassoulet, which he planned to serve at a dinner party he was giving for his [godparents? uncles? beloved unrelated family members who've treasured him since he was a baby and have been entangled with his parents since their own callow youth so why isn't there a name for this relationship? The English language is dumb]. He'd never made cassoulet before, I've never made cassoulet before, so we spent much time on the phone pondering and fretting and cheerleading. I do love that my children dive into cooking. T and I did exactly the same thing at their age: we'd splash headlong into some ridiculous 1960s-era French recipe, and we'd sink or swim . . . quite a bit of sinking, actually, as I was an extremely plain cook and T had never cooked at all as a kid, but our spirits were high.

Today I will no doubt hear all about the travails and/or successes of the dinner party. I look forward to it. How pale life would be without this ongoing boy chatter. 

We got nailed with another round of non-forecast, laundry-destroying showers yesterday, plus I got caught in the rain on my walk and came home soaked. But the plants are loving the weather, so I will not complain. The herb seedlings I dug in on Monday are glowing, pea and onion shoots are spiking, and the tulips are in their glory. The air may be chilly, but I'm basking in these evenings of warm wood stove and open windows--the ultimate northcountry luxury.

Yesterday was filled with this-and-thats: some editing, some manuscript work. I managed to force myself to send out a couple of poems, and I fidgeted around with a few blurts from my notebook. I read about the Brontes; I read Drabble's The Sea Lady. I repaired the torn sole on one of my favorite sneakers. I started figuring out dates for my autumn visit to Brooklyn. I wrote to a friend about her poems. I ordered an old-fashioned fifties-style metal patio table so we can eat dinner in the backyard this summer. I fell asleep on the couch for an hour.

Today will be another loose-limbed day, showery and cool and mostly unplanned, though we are going out to the movies tonight, to see Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. Happy damp May Day, with its cherry-tree lanes and tulip crowds, with its passerine birds shrilling hectically in gray first light, with its bad-hair middle-school boys playing theatrical kickball in the middle of the street, then suddenly scattering for dinner. Happy damp May Day, when lawn-care guys attempt to spread mulch and stare at their phones simultaneously; when one of those innocents decides to take a whiz behind the client's garage, unaware that three kitchen windows have a front-row view.

Here's a poem I haven't been able to stop thinking about this spring--

Assault

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I

I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.


II

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!