Neighborhood stories: Let's start with this young man. On Thursday morning I looked up from my book and  he was staring through the living-room window at me. I know deer frequently travel through farther-flung neighborhoods, areas closer to the city's forest trail system, but no one in our more urban setting has ever seen a deer here before. Tom glimpsed him again that evening, but since then no more sightings. Let's hope he's found his way back to the woods.

And then there's Jack, the cat who lives across the street and who is my baby-sitting charge for the next few days. In a classic cat bribery scheme, he convinced the wind to suddenly blow open the back door I'd just walked through and instantly made his escape. Jack is a hardened outdoorsman so I wasn't too worried, and in fact he did return for recapture later that morning but, jeesh, cats. Today he won't find me so soft.

Jack is a well-known local eccentric. When I asked my next-door neighbor to keep me posted if she saw him, she rolled her eyes without worry: we all know that Jack will do whatever Jack wants. There's community comfort in our mild gossip about weirdos such as Jack, the world's nosiest civil servant, always prying into everyone else's business . . . but do not try to pet him. Nothing insults him more.

Meanwhile, the weather! What a day we had yesterday--soft swirling wind, bright sunshine, perfect temperatures. I decided to do no garden work but take a day to enjoy the space: sit among the flowers, wander my small pathways, lean back and stare up into the canopy, listen to birdsong. I wrote two poem drafts; I practiced the violin. It was a perfect day.

What's more, Jack's family gets a farmshare delivery once a week, which they couldn't use this time so asked if I'd like it. You know how slow my vegetable garden has been this spring, and I was thrilled. Unpacking the box was like getting a Christmas present in June: new potatoes, beets and beet greens, chard, kale, lemon balm, dill, lettuce, even a celeriac. Last night we ate marinated flank steak with baby herbed potatoes alongside roasted greens--a big plate of summer . . . windows open, neighborhood babies cooing, and on the radio the Yankees losing to the Orioles.

Yes, yes, you know I miss Harmony; you know central Maine is my homeland; you know all about my forever woods loneliness. But gosh: there are days when I am floored by this place where I so reluctantly ended up. Deering Center, land of tiny lush gardens and tree-shaded sidewalks; its staid domestic history--rows of close-set family houses, most built between the 1890s and the 1930s (with a few 1940s interlopers such as my own). In the summer evenings the air rings with the sounds of big kids playing foursquare in the streets, toddlers cackling in the yards. Neighbors actually lean over the fences to talk to one another. It is like living in a My Three Sons episode.

The house windows were open all night, and I woke to robin song--trill, burble, and question; trill, burble, and question; again and again and again.

It is a warm and humid dawn. I suppose we will have to lug the a/c out of the basement this weekend, though I so much prefer real air. But already the upstairs is muggy, and true hot weather hasn't even kicked in yet.

Thank goodness I went out to write last night. It felt really good to be with the poets, after my two-week absence, and now my notebook is peppered with useful scratchings and, just like that, my poem-making itch has returned.

I am full of eagerness. 

The little northern city by the sea is swaddled in a warm wet blanket of fog, and the birds are singing crazily, and summer is about to blossom. Today the climbing roses, loaded with buds, will explode into crimson glory. Today I'll open all of the windows and put on sandals for my walk to the dentist. Today I'll sit on the front stoop with a glass of ice tea and watch the neighborhood babies wave bare feet as their strong mothers shove strollers up the hill.

Yesterday I posted a new Poetry Kitchen class, "The Morality of Imagination: Writing into Other Lives," a two-day generative and revision session inspired by Shelley's "Defence of Poetry." Though registration's been live for less than 24 hours, the class is already half full, so you might want to sign up quickly if you're at all interested.

Meanwhile, I've been reading a couple of Le Carre novels I plucked from free piles and musing over how deeply sorrowful they are. I know I've said this before, but does anyone write better about loneliness? I am not a spy-thriller aficionado, but his writing moves me deeply. He is to his genre what McMurtry is to the western: a novelist who manipulates routine plot and style expectations in ways that draw the reader into a complex and painful relationship with character, landscape, history, and language.

Tonight, after a two-week hiatus, I hope to finally get back to my writing group. In the meantime, I've got the house to clean, and some desk work to handle, and that aforementioned dentist appointment to endure. And a summer day to love.

 It's drizzly outside, and much warmer than it has typically been in the early mornings--already in the low 60s instead of our usual mid-40s or low 50s. I expect the plants are very, very happy.

Yesterday I finished another full round of weeding, and now every bed is in good shape. I've caught up on pruning and deadheading, and for the moment the place looks as good as it can look, given the ugliness of the house siding and the various gaps and snaggles in the yard infrastructure.

I finished Proulx's Barkskins yesterday. For such a massive book (700 pages or so), it was a surprisingly quick read, and quite interesting as well--a giant novel about the lumber industry may not sound scintillating, but it actually was, though the ending dropped into environmental preachiness . . . morally admirable, of course, but novelistically annoying.

This afternoon I'll have my monthly zoom confab with Teresa and Jeannie. This morning I'm not sure what I'll be doing with myself: going for a walk in the rain; maybe washing the upstairs windows; ideally, writing a poem, but who knows? Right now I am in an intense reading state; I am awash in other people's words . . . poems, novels, meditations. If that's what my heart desires, why should I argue?

Still, it's been an odd week so far . . . spacious, lonesome . . . books and books and garden and garden . . . I'm curious to see what happens next.

Another cool and cloudy day on the horizon--though, believe it or not, we actually could use some rain. Things have dried out a lot since our last round of downpours. A little rain today and tonight would set the garden up nicely for the hot weather that's forecast to roll in later this week.

I've been waiting for another editing project to appear, so my work responsibilities have been scatty so far this week. Mostly I've been catching up on various reading projects--working my way through Patricia Smith's Unshuttered, starting Cecile Wajsbrot's Nevermore, finishing Maria Zoccala's Helen of Troy, 1993, and plowing into Annie Proulx's Barkskins. The stack on the coffee table is high.

Today will be more of the same, plus errands, plus weeding, mowing, and pruning, if the rain allows. I always feel sheepish about these blips of off-time, as if I should be doing "real" work rather than my own work, and I wish I didn't have to constantly wrestle with my own clear awareness that I am not wasting time. But such is the power of the past. At least I'm not giving in to those lies.

I woke this morning to learn that I've got a new poem up on Vox Populi . . . yet another elegy to 1970s western Pennsylvania. I don't know when I'll ever be done with that topic. It surfaces and resurfaces. It gives me no choice.

Another Monday. With school out, my walk will be quiet this morning. Deering Center features an elementary school, a middle school, a high school, and a college campus, all lined up, one after the other, on Stevens Avenue. It is the most educational of neighborhoods, and on school mornings and afternoons the streets are afloat with hand-holding parents and kindergartners, gaggles of lurching sixth graders, high schoolers clutching giant sugar drinks, jogging college students encased in headphones.

So in the summer the sidewalks are notably empty--just middle-aged trudgers, and dog servants, and strung-out parents with babies, and self-flagellating exercisers, and the occasional grouchy teenager muttering into a phone.

Speaking of self-flagellating exercisers, I did finally roll my bike out of the shed yesterday, dusted it off, pumped up the tires, and then T and I went for a spin--a delightful ride; I don't know why I took so long to get around to riding season. It was nothing but fun, and I'm not at all sore today, so why was I so slow?

Possibly because I was too busy writing the same poem for the twentieth time. 

No surprise: attendance at yesterday's reading was tiny. Poets love demonstrating, and I'm glad so many of them were out on the streets where they needed to be. But it was a pleasant reading despite the minuscule crowd, and a bit of a distraction from family stuff: my elderly father has come down with Covid, so my sister and I have been in a constant state of text-triage.

Other than that continuing saga, I've got nothing on the docket for today. I hope to mow grass, and I need to do the grocery shopping, and I'd like to finally get my bike out of the shed and prep it for riding season.

And I'm longing to turn on the poem faucet again. I've been so roiled up with travel and obligation that I've barely touched my own real work. I keep going into the world and reading poems, and then feeling the tug of emptiness because I am not writing any poems at the moment. The loneliness of not making: it is as real a sorrow as any other.

Well, weekend reading number 1 is in the books--a genial gathering of poets and musicians in Kittery (which is technically in Maine but feels like seacoast New Hampshire), including one of my oldest poet friends, Meg Kearney. Now today I'm heading north and inland for weekend reading number 2 at the Bailey Memorial Library in Winthrop (a town that is definitely in Maine), where I'll split the bill with another Portland poet, Mike Bove.

It's pleasant to sit quietly this morning, looking out at the few fat raindrops spattering the walkways. I know there will be a lot of protests around the country today, none of which I can attend because of this long-scheduled reading. But there's more than one way to lift a voice, so why not a poem instead of a sign? Shelley would agree.

The vases on the mantle are filled with white roses, white peonies, golden yarrow. The house is dim under rain-light and maple-light. Kitchen counters and tiles gleam vaguely in the gray-green ether. The rooms feel small, fragile. This is a house built of sticks, and a wolf could blow it down.

Yesterday it was 84 degrees in Portland, so to celebrate I lugged the fire tools and the woodbox to the basement. That means no more wood fires until September, and I hope my optimism about summer isn't misplaced.

The day was beautiful, though--sun and clouds and a swirling breeze; every window open and the garden sighing in pleasure. It was easy to believe that summer was real.

Today is supposed to be cooler but still balmy. I've got a few desk things to work on, but I should still be able to spend some time in the flowerbeds before I leave for Kittery. I've started reading Annie Proulx's Barkskins, a massive tome about French-Canadian settlement. I've got a stack of poetry books I need to read before I meet with Teresa and Jeannie next week. And I've got these back-to-back poetry events to finish prepping for. But the weather is so alluring. It's hard to keep my mind on words.

It's peony season here in Maine--such beautiful flowers, such sloppy plants. No matter how carefully I tie them up, they always collapse and shatter.

This morning, the vases are full of peonies and the house is full of scent, usually a sign that spring is morphing into summer. Yet summer doesn't seem like a season to bank on. Thus far, cold rain has undermined every brief warm spell, and my vegetable garden has never looked worse. It's hard to picture a harvest.

But I'm not complaining, I'm not complaining. Today will be sunshiny, a good day for house and yard chores; a good day to eat my breakfast outside with a book; a good day to mull at my desk beside a wide-open window. I ought to go out to write tonight, but so far this week I've only spent one evening at home, and that feels wrong. Tomorrow night I'll be in Kittery for a reading, and then I'll be on the road for much of Saturday for my Winthrop reading. So I'm torn about tonight.

Anyway, I'll figure it out. In the meantime, I've got to write introductions for the faculty performances at Monson, I've got to plot out my three upcoming and very different readings, I've got to scrub bathrooms and weed the vegetable beds . . . The day unfolds.

A few years ago I opened an old Best American Short Stories volume that I'd found in a little free library and read my first Lori Ostlund short story. I loved it, so much so that I had the urge, as I sometimes do, to send her a note and tell her what I thought of it.

I like sending fan mail to writers I admire, though I know enough not to expect a response. Mostly people don't reply, and those who do tend to be appreciative but reserved--understandably, they don't want to get sucked into conversation with a potential weirdo. But Lori had none of that reserve. Not only did she write back instantly, but she immediately bought one of my books and read it with her wife, the novelist Anne Raeff, who in turn reached out to me to talk about the poems in the collection that had mattered to her.

So when I learned that the two would be in Portland during Lori's book tour, I of course made plans to go to the reading. What I didn't expect was an invitation to dinner the night before so that we could get to know each other in person. What I didn't expect was a book signed to "One of My Favorite Poets."

This country is such a shithole right now. Maybe that's why these little lights gleam so brightly in my thoughts. What generosity, to extend a hand . . . to invite a stranger to be a friend.

Apparently, we are trapped in a loop of endless April. My vegetable garden may be a loss this year, but on the bright side the songbirds seem to be enjoying the perpetual cold rain, the terrible backyard is finally turning into an arbor, and I'm not worrying too much about sunburns.

Yesterday I finished an editing project, then muscled through conference paperwork and went up to Bowdoin to rehearse with conference faculty before having a sweet evening out with the San Francisco writers. Today will be more conference planning: figuring out my reading plans, pulling together poems for sharing. I've also got to prep for readings this Friday and Saturday, and then there's Lori's reading to attend tonight . . . life is kind of head-spinning this week, but at least I've now got an editing gap so I can pull myself together without too much panic.

Planning for the conference has been complex, mostly because our theme is complex. Last fall Teresa and I decided to focus on varieties of collaboration--not only in terms of communal projects but also across disciplines and time. As a result, all of the faculty members have been pulling each other in as performance and teaching partners . . . which is delightful and deeply engaging and interesting while also making me feel like an eight-armed, wild-eyed, schedule monster. What will I forget? Something vital, no doubt.

The dawn air is thick with haze--Canadian wildfire smoke, I think, though I can't smell it. I've got a busy day ahead--a walk, and then editing, and then the violin and I are taking a jaunt to Bowdoin to rehearse with Gretchen and Gwynnie for their Monson performance. Then tonight I'm having dinner with a pair of San Francisco-based fiction writers I've never met before. But over the past couple years, we've gotten friendly about each others' work, and now they're in town for a reading tomorrow, so they reached out with a dinner invitation.

The entire week will vibrate at this level of busy. I've got a reading on Friday in Kittery, on Saturday in Winthrop. On Wednesday I'm talking with Teresa about Shelley. On Tuesday I'm going to Lori Ostlund's reading here in Portland. Usually I'd be going out to write on Thursday, but I'm not sure I'll be able to manage yet another night out this week.

And the conference is coming up fast. All of my big plans are set, but I've still got to print everything out, tweak details, figure out logistics, organize my reading, collect the books I'm bringing, reach out again to participants, and so on and so forth . . . Even though my responsibilities are more contained than they were at the Frost Place (no housecleaning or meal planning, thank goodness),  they are still myriad, and at this time of year I always feel as if my hair is flying off my head.

We've still got that one spot open . . . and it could be yours--

We must have had a big thunderstorm overnight because this morning the garden looks like it's been beaten up: peonies sagging, iris mashed. But the air is quiet now, and the sky is hazy but clearish, and soon I'll get myself outside to assess the day's chores.

Last night was my friend Marita O'Neill's book launch. It was such an uplifting affair--lots of friends and family and community camaraderie . . . exactly the right sort of reading and party. I don't love all parties, by any means, and I can get panicky and anxious in social settings. So it was sweet to be in a gathering that was the exact opposite of my fear. Last night, whichever way I turned, there was a person I was delighted to talk to.

As I write, the sky is brightening. Pale sun-glitter rims puddles and wet roofs. I'm looking forward to a day in the garden--weeding, mowing, pruning as the birds chatter and the neighborhood babies cackle and wail.

I spent much of yesterday reading Shelley's "Defense of Poetry," an essay I've read many times before. It's not an easy piece to get through: every time I start by thinking, "I have no idea what he's saying." And then suddenly the sentences begin to shine, suddenly I have slipped beyond, in his words, "the dull vapours of the little world of self":

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensively and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.

Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

Saturdays are always rainy in Maine, but for the moment no actual water is falling. This morning's air is thick with humidity. Fog curls through the open windows, and a robin trills relentlessly--repeat, repeat, repeat. Gulls swirl overhead, squawking and wailing. The sky has the dull glitter of a galvanized pail, and the gardens throb with green.

The day will be filled with this-and-thats. It's far too wet to work outside, but maybe I can walk. I've still got lots of Shelley homework to finish; my future daughter-in-law asked me to read the draft of an article she's working on; I'm one of the openers at my friend Marita's book launch tonight, which means I've got to choose a poem. No doubt there are other obligations that I've temporarily forgotten.

And now here comes the rain again, tapping and pattering.

On the mantle are two slim and velvety Siberian irises and the first milk-pale peony, unfolding. I am thinking of poems, though I am not thinking about either writing or reading them . . . more, thinking about how the feeling of poems twists and tugs around me like a scarf fluttering in the wind.

Connecticut traffic was terrible, so I didn't get home till almost 9 p.m. last night. But now here I sit, on a muggy, storm-ominous morning, as T moseys around the kitchen making his breakfast and the cat mildly yowls at the door.

Today will be laundry and housework and undoubtedly groceries, once I figure out how empty the place has gotten. Meanwhile, thunder lashes the distance, and the pollen headache I've had for six days settles into its accustomed corner of my skull, and the air drapes and sags like a moth-eaten boa.

 I'll be heading back to Maine today, after a lovely, lovely visit. Yesterday's ferry ride to the Rockaways was a highlight, wandering around the Village in the summer evening was another . . . It was so good to spend intense time with my boy and with Stephen. As always, leaving this town is poignant. As always, it's like leaving a version of home.

Yesterday I saw this Hilma af Klint show at MOMA--a very odd and wonderful display of her precise botanical drawings, her peculiar diagrammatic visions of atoms and plant propagation, and the meanings that stood behind each plant she studied: oddly precise emotional or physical states such as "Belief in help during mountain climbing / Don't forget paradisiacal virginity." The show was a revelation of obsession, with something Dickinsonian about it, and Jeannie and I were mesmerized.

Today P and I are going to take the ferry to the Rockaways, a 45-minute ride through New York Harbor, then around Coney Island to Jamaica Bay: all for $4. I love boat rides and am looking forward to seeing the city from an entirely new angle.

And then tonight the reading at KGB . . . here's hoping I'm not too sleepy after all of that walking and air.

P and I walked around Green-Wood in the afternoon, where we saw an egret and waxwings and bullfrogs and the burying ground of Boss Tweed. It was a mild day, activity-wise, but for some reason I slept like a boulder. I'm not sure why I was so tired. With Ray gone, there is no more perpetual beer, no more ridiculous too-late dinners, no more listening to one album after another until 4 a.m. Instead, I ate tacos and drank an horchata and dropped into bed like I'd been felled. Life has become staid, and Brooklyn has become almost restful.

This will be a brief hello as typing is hard on the bus. Last time I rode this route, it was January and we were driving into iced-over darkness. Now, as I embark, it's full daylight--skies blue, trees in leaf, a different world. And in 6 hours I'll be in the fabled metropolis, where it's already summertime.

Yesterday T bought our tickets to Chicago . . . another train adventure to look forward to. I am thrilled about getting to see both of my boys this summer, each in his own domain. I'm happy to be setting off on today's solo outing, happy also that T and I will get to travel together in July. Today I'll wend my way to Brooklyn, meet my kid for lunch, go for a walk with him in June-beautiful Green-wood, along the scuffed and scatty streets of Sunset Park, chatter and sigh and laugh together, as we do, as we always do.

I hope your day is just as sunny.

Portland is enveloped in a haze of drizzle--thinner than rain, thicker than mist; more like quiet atmospheric tears than a definable weather event.

I spent much of my rainy Saturday in the kitchen--baking a cherry pie, making dough and then pizza--but I also worked upstairs on a poem draft, which this morning is pleasing me very much. Between showers I spread lettuce seed and transplanted nasturtiums. Last year's plants self-sowed plentifully, a big surprise: nasturtium seeds never wintered over in central Maine, but here in balmy seaside Portland they are regenerating like crazy. So I am moving dozens of seedlings to bare patches in other beds, and with luck they will take hold and bloom all summer.

Today I need to focus on packing for New York, always a challenge. I'll be dragging around my suitcase and backpack all day long on Monday--clumping up and down subway stairwells, trailing through crowds--so everything needs to be as compact as possible. Because I am not naturally good at traveling light, I have to find ways to force myself to be reasonable. For instance, last spring, before I took my big train trip to Chicago, I purposely bought a tiny purse and a too-small backpack. That approach worked pretty well, though nothing can make a suitcase easier to haul through the New York subway system.

If you happen to be in the city and are in the mood for poems, I'll be reading on Wednesday at the launch of the anthology Poetry Is Bread, at KGB on East 4th Street, 7-9 p.m. The book began as the poet Tina Cane's pandemic video project, She invited numerous poets to make videos for her during and after Covid, and then morphed those readings into a book. Lots of us will be in attendance on Wednesday, which at least guarantees a crowd of listeners.

Mostly, though, I am looking forward to hanging out with my kid, hanging out with my friends, bopping through museums and gardens, riding the ferry, trudging the streets, surprising myself.