At daybreak Tom was up and out of the house in a whirl, off to take pictures in the early morning light, so I sit here alone with a pot of coffee, listening to the chip-chip of an annoyed squirrel in the ash tree and idly wondering what I will do with myself on this Saturday. Yard work, I suppose, but I am open to distractions, should any amble along.

Yesterday afternoon Teresa, Jeannie, and I had another of our Poetry Lab confabs--our monthly zoom chatters about whatever might arise from what we've been reading or hearing or doing or musing over. I do love these visits. Those two are so smart. Just listening their minds ping from one flash to the next makes me proud to know them. And I feel we are good for each other . . . or at least they are good for me. The ideas they raise, the paths they rush down--often these are places I had not thought of venturing. I come away from our meetings amazed, untethered, dizzy.

For much of this summer I have existed--very temporarily, I know this--in an extraordinary bubble that I can only call paradise . . . and how that can be true, given the chaos of our public institutions, is beyond my understanding. I have been writing new work that excites me, I have been preparing a book for publication, I have been surrounded by poets I admire and look up to and who treat me as a peer, I have spent a week trying to create a dreamworld of poetry for other people to bask in, I have been madly in love, my garden is flourishing, my house is bright, my stove simmers, I am reading and reading and reading and reading, and walking and walking and walking.

I want to weep with gratitude. I know this moment will end and I will tumble into the dust. But just to have been given it, to have received it into myself . . . all I can say is that the gods are generous and they are terrible, and most of all they are inscrutable.