Yesterday was a summer day--hot but still pleasant in the shade and in the house, a bit stuffy for sleeping but nothing a fan couldn't handle. Shortly the wretchedness is supposed to kick in--temperatures in the 90s today and tomorrow--yet for the moment the air through the open windows is cool on my bare shoulders, and a warm coffee cup is comforting in my hands.

Yesterday I took a long walk, without ankle consequences, and I hope to do that again today, before the heat invades. Mid-morning the arborist stopped by and had unexpectedly good things to say about our maple situation, which raised my spirits considerably. She admired their strong crowns, their position as a grove, their interwoven root systems, all of which gives them strength in storms. She showed me that the hole in a trunk was slowly healing itself, and she had a non-brutal solution to saving a potentially weakened fork. She admired my healthy ash tree, and I felt happy to be talking to such a calm and affectionate tree person.

Otherwise, it was a quiet day. I worked on a poem revision, and I worked on a friend's poetry manuscript, and I hand-washed a batch of hats and scarves and gloves, and I went to the grocery store, and I finished the Capote novel, and I started a Joyce Carol Oates novel that I don't much like so far, and I made chicken salad and summer rolls, and then T and I ate dinner outside in the gloaming, under our beautiful massive trees.

This morning I woke to find that I've got a poem out in Vox Populi . . . another in a series that borrows titles from famous works of literature and then uses them entirely differently. This one, "The Way We Live Now," is from a Trollope novel.

***

And godspeed, Willie Mays.