My first Poetry Kitchen class of the season is coming up on October 12, so I've been working hard on the syllabus and the reading packet: three pairs of poems, three linked discussions, three big writing prompts. This kind of planning requires so much work: it's not simple to construct an atmosphere that combines ease with concentration, especially on zoom. But the work is interesting and absorbing for its own sake. I read through poems, thinking about how they dovetail, imagining how conversations will open a window into sudden new writing. Teaching can be a kind of negative capability: how can I step aside as manipulator and let the poems themselves rise into power?

Today is the first day of October, my birthday month, the month of playoff baseball and bright blue skies and red maple leaves. This morning a truck will dump a load of firewood in the driveway, and I will spend the next few afternoons trundling the wheelbarrow back and forth to the woodshed, squirreling the logs away for next winter. I'm almost ready for winter. Almost.

But I've got too much to do at my desk. Just thinking about the editing stack makes me want to put my head down and go to sleep. I'd rather trundle firewood. I'd rather fill bushel baskets with green tomatoes. I'd rather rake leaves and roll out pie dough. Alas.

Yesterday, on my walk, I found another small clump of hen-of-woods mushrooms--just enough for dinner. I was already marinating a leg of lamb (in yogurt, mint, coriander, and tangerine zest), so I made a vegetable dish to accompany it: slices of potato layered in a pie dish with sautéed wild mushrooms and diced red peppers from the garden, then baked in milk and butter. On the side was a simple fresh tomato salad, and we had apple crisp for dessert. It was a magnificent meal: organic Vermont lamb grown by a friend, garden produce, local apples, foraging treasures . . . a meal to help me forget my deskwork grumpiness.

Thank goodness I'm a cook. It's a job that almost always makes me feel better.