Town living has its luxuries--for instance, a bookstore around the corner, so we can walk out arm in arm to a poetry reading, then walk home under the flowering trees to fix an easy dinner. This neighborhood is domestic and sweet, and finally, after eight years, I know that I'm not a stranger anymore. The woods haven't faded, but that world isn't mine anymore. I live here, in this shabby midcentury cape, on this little arable plot, on a narrow curved street of staid old-fashioned houses, under these big maples, beyond the train tracks, a few steps away from the busy arteries of a small city, a few steps away from the North Atlantic tides.

Yesterday afternoon I finally caught up with my weeding (though, in spring, one never actually catches up with the weeding; it's an endless circle). So today, after work, I'll focus on re-sowing seeds that the squirrels dug up (sigh), setting up trellis strings for the scarlet runner beans, and other such fiddly tasks. The sunshine has been a treat: I've hung laundry on the outside lines every day; I've eaten my lunch in the garden and lingered on the stoop in the late afternoons. But the rains will be back later in the week . . . and they should be back: young gardens are so thirsty.

I'm nearly finished with Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea. Now I need to turn my attention to Shelley; and to Christian Barter's new collection, which I bought last night; and to Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel's novel Dayswork, which I want to reread before the poetry conference.

Speaking of which: We've got just two spaces left at the conference. Please consider joining us. We've got a magnificent group of participants . . . including a nationally renowned poet, who, amazingly, is coming in not as faculty but as a colleague. I think the atmosphere will be particularly rich this year, and I would love to see you there.