Another foggy morning, but the air is much cooler than it was yesterday. Clearly showers are on the way, and just in time: the gardens get thirsty so quickly. Between work and a zoom meeting I managed to mow grass--for the third time this week. In the damp weather it's been growing at fairy-tale speed, and the reel mower can barely hack through it. But at least it's a semblance of a lawn now. Then before dinner I thinned the new greens sprouting in the garden boxes, and we had our first homegrown salad of the season--miniature arugula and spinach tossed with violet leaves and blossoms . . . only a handful for each but so tender and fresh.

I'm ready enough for a showery weekend. Of course I always have a hard time staying inside, so I'm sure I'll be out in the mist, transplanting a little, weeding a little, walking in the rain. But the big jobs are done--grass managed, seeds sowed, mulch hauled--and I can putter and dream.

Yesterday's zoom confab with Teresa and Jeannie was particularly rich. We'd each brought in a draft we'd been working on; and as Teresa said, each poem was so extremely characteristic of its poet. Jeannie wrote about divination; Teresa wrote about Jersey City; I wrote about a brook. The poems were our mirrors.

The way the three of us talk about poems: I can hardly describe how it happens, because I don't understand how it happens. But we never workshop, we never boss. No "Fix this sentence" or "That line doesn't work." We just get excited about the poems and suddenly, as the two of them talk, a clarity comes over me . . . "what if?" . . . "I wonder" . . . "oh, oh, oh!"  Their conversation makes magic.

So this morning my thoughts are hugging my brook poem--stroking its stanzas and line breaks, tenderly tracing its surges and repetitions. I will make changes, I will keep re-seeing, but I love it so much more than I did yesterday morning. Now it is like a beloved small son, rubbing his eyes as he wakes up from a long sleep.

Those are the kind of poet friends I have. They offer me my own work as a gift.