It poured rain all night and is still drizzling now. The garden is beautifully sopped, and I'm so glad I did manage to get those hostas transplanted, and even a few leaves raked, before the storm.

Because I'll be teaching all weekend, today is my holiday. Other than answering a few emails and prepping for tomorrow's class, I am not planning to accomplish anything that isn't my own stuff. I finished both editing jobs this week, my high school plans are done, the Baron essay is done, the vacuuming and bathrooms are done. So I'll go for a walk in the dripping woods, I'll throw a load of sheets into the washing machine, and then I'll settle into whatever I feel like messing around with . . . poems, garden, reading, cooking. I do have a haircut appointment this afternoon, and afterward I'll step over to my neighbor's house to watch the baking show with her, but nobody could label either of those activities work. I am very much looking forward to my day.

I'd like to finish The Waves and "Song of Myself." I'd like to make my way through another chunk of Little Dorrit. I'd like to work on poem drafts and maybe start printing out pieces so that I can begin to imagine a collection. I'd like to pick up Alice Notley's "The Descent of Alette" at the library. I'd like to sit by the fire and do a crossword puzzle. I'd like to rake a few leaves and harvest some kale. I'd like to play mousie with Chuck. I'd like to slowly dice up vegetables for minestrone. I won't do nearly all of this, but any of it would satisfy me.

We'll probably get a few tricker-or-treaters tonight, but we rarely see many. For some reason our little street doesn't draw them. But no matter the number, Chuck will be amazed and excited. Everything thrills that guy. Dry leaves! Dixon Ticonderoga pencils! A bread tie! Dawn's nose! 

I woke to a cool and cloudy morning, with rain in the forecast for tonight, I'm pleased to report. 

Yesterday afternoon I snagged half an hour to cut back the rest of my lily and iris stalks. This afternoon maybe I'll get a chance to split and transplant a few hostas before the storm arrives. That depends on how swiftly I can plow through my house and desk chores. I did get next week's high school plans sussed out, and I'm making quick progress on the copyediting, so I'm hopeful.

My brain is slowly beginning to unclot itself. I am feeling lighter, less tangled, which is a surprise to me as tomorrow is the first anniversary of Ray's death, which I have been dreading. Last night we went out to listen to Jonathan Richman, who of course I first heard with Ray . . . those Modern Lovers songs, so plain, so naked with longing, unwinding themselves at midnight in the concrete cocoon of a dorm room.

But somehow, last night, I wasn't freighted with loss. I was just listening to a man in his seventies sing and play guitar, and I was happy to be witnessing how lively and full of curiosity such a man can be. I was happy to be reminded that life is for being alive. Here we are. So let's be here.

I woke up this morning to the excellent news that the Blue Jays knocked superhuman pitcher Shohei Ohtani out of the game in the sixth inning, winning the contest despite an injury to one of their best hitters in the previous day's eighteen-inning grind. Ah, baseball. You are such a romance.

Now Little Chuck has had his breakfast, Tom and I have had our coffee, and I am sitting here in my couch corner contemplating the day ahead. I had a good night's sleep, and I'm feel vastly lightened, now that I've finished that essay. I turned in my first CavanKerry assignment as well, so I'm altogether less overwhelmed than I was. Today I've got to work on high school plans and return to my academic copyediting project, but later I might actually have a chance to work in the garden, or even look at my own poems. And tonight T and I are going out to a Jonathan Richman show, so altogether the day will have a novel flavor.

Yesterday Teresa and Jeannie and I talked about moving forward with the Substack journal we've been planning but have thus far not executed. For all three of us Baron's death has been a blow, not least because he was the person who brought us together in the first place. We've been churning in a sort of group maelstrom over it, none of us able to make much progress with other work. So it was a relief to discover we were able to compile a few sensible plans about moving forward with the journal.

Sunshine today. 

Today is my younger son's 28th birthday, and I wish him the sweetest of days in far-off Brooklyn. He is one of the great joys of my life, so full of feeling and thought, so wholehearted about what matters. He remains my most persistent phone caller, the family member most likely to get a poem read to him, a sports romantic, lover of rivers, whisperer of cats. How I adore him.

Yesterday I got a solid start on my two editing projects and, thank goodness, I finally finished the Baron essay and was able to send it to his wife for her okay. Today I'll run it past the rest of the contributors, and then I'll submit it to the journal editor, and then, I hope, I can take a deep breath and let myself off the hook. Writing that piece has been a massive undertaking. From the start I have felt unqualified, unready, unhappy, and also unable to say no. So I did it, and now there are twelve manuscript pages of shadow.

This morning I'll get onto my mat and return to my editing jobs, and in the afternoon I'll zoom with Jeannie and Teresa. I'd like to think I'll finish the manuscript commentary today, but we'll see. That kind of focus can be slow work. The press sent me one of Baron's author letters to show me how he was thinking and talking about the collections he edited, so in that regard I am still carrying his weight, even without the essay around my neck. But I guess that is my job right now.

Anyway, the sun will shine. Little Chuck will sit at the open front door watching the leaves blow. I'll pour tea and read Virginia Woolf over lunch. The Carolina wren will sing in the bare lilacs. Far to my south a hurricane will shred lives. The abyss is difficult to fathom.

It's 34 degrees this morning, just shy of a frost. I got a lot done in the garden yesterday, though not everything I'd hoped to accomplish. But the furniture is stowed, I cut up sticks and bagged them, and  I pruned the massive elderberry and bagged the trimmings. I also made good progress on cutting back perennials. I hope I can get more of that finished this week, as well as do some transplanting, but these jobs always take longer than I think they will.

The next few weeks are going to be hectic. I'll be teaching or traveling for three weekends in a row, plus embarking on my usual Monson jaunts. But at least I'll be sleeping in my own bed for the next seven days. This morning I'll go for my walk, and then I'll turn my thoughts to finishing the Baron essay. This week I've got a poetry manuscript to comment on and a small academic project to copyedit. I need to prep for my high schoolers and go over my long-poem syllabus and show up for some meetings. I've got to keep up with house chores and cook meals and, with luck, get back into the garden. Life feels kind of dizzying, but the great news is that I am not sick and my car isn't terrifying and my cupboards are full of ingredients.  Also, my kitten is no longer sad.

I still don't know when I'll be able to think seriously about my own poems. I keep writing them, tucking my drafts around the edges of obligation. I keep reading and reading. But there has been no space to plan a collection. Maybe once I finish the essay, I can hoard that space for myself. Life seems so eager to crowd me out.

I spent yesterday morning in the garden: cleaning out the last of the delicate crops--peppers, eggplant, okra. We haven't had a frost yet, but they'd clearly stopped growing, so goodbye. I pulled carrots and dismantled the insect nets, and did a thorough weeding of the vegetable beds. I planted, then mulched the garlic. I collected the outside chairs, drained the hoses, stowed the table, the fire grate, and the cold frame. Today T and I will finagle the chairs and hoses through the cellar hatch for storage, carry the snow shovels out to the shed, and then that stage of fall cleanup will be done.

Today I'll work on pruning perennials, bagging sticks, and, I hope, splitting my hostas so I can fill some blank spaces in the backyard beds. I might start raking leaves into the gardens, though there are many more leaves to fall.

Baron's pink dahlias still bloom bravely. The orange nasturtiums and white zinnias are hanging on. The blueberry bushes and the Japanese maple are brilliant crimson. Despite the drought the yard glows red and gold and green. Kale, chard, and lettuce flutter in the vegetable garden. The sturdy herbs are thriving; even the basil, though wan, is hanging onto life.

In the cellar, the firewood is stacked. Boxes and buckets are filled with kindling. The furnace is clean. The tank is full. There is a basket of potatoes and onions. Drying shirts and pants tremble on the clotheslines. Upstairs in the freezer are bags of wild mushrooms, green beans, kale, corn, peppers; boxes of tomato sauce, peaches, chicken stock. In the refrigerator: peppers, carrots, cabbage, celery, beets--some of it mine, all of it local.

I feel rich. It's not like I've forgotten that obscene car-repair bill and the rest of our endless suck of expenses. But the homestead snugness of late autumn is so reassuring. We have food. We have heat. Let the storms arise.

Saturday, dark and cool. A fire in the stove. Hot coffee in my cup. I dreamed that Chuck was dreaming, and that I had access to the rolling receipt for the expense of what he was dreaming: $4,000 and counting. What might a little cat dream that would cost so much? Perhaps pushing crystal off counters or eating an expensive parakeet. The dream-within-a-dream did not divulge.

 

Hey, how about those Canadians and their pinch-hit grand slam? I suppose I ought to be rooting against the Blue Jays, given that they're divisional foes of the Red Sox. But I've seen so many of these players in their youth: the Jays' AA squad is the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, which regularly plays our Portland Sea Dogs. So I have been watching Vlad Guerrero and Bo Bichette since they were baby big leaguers and am feeling motherly pride in them.

This weekend will be my last restful one for a while. Next weekend I'll be teaching, the following one I'll probably be in Vermont, then I'll be teaching again, and then Thanksgiving will be upon us. So today and tomorrow I'm going to plant garlic, stow away hoses and outside furniture, continue cutting back my perennials, and otherwise try to catch up before the cold decides to arrive. The days won't just be chores: this afternoon T and I might go to a movie; tomorrow we're having dinner with friends.

I am looking forward to being outside, to the crunch of leaves under my old sneakers, to the satisfactions of mulching a garlic bed for winter. I like the sleepiness of autumn; I like saying, "Goodnight till spring."

Yesterday I finished a small editing assignment in the morning, then spent much of the rest of the day fine-tuning the Baron essay, reading The Waves, reading "Song of Myself." I baked an apple cake so that my neighbor and I could have a snack while we watched the new British baking show episode . . . the exact same cake I'd baked the day before for my poetry group, assuming I'd have leftovers for our tea party. That was not the case: apparently poets really like apple cake. The recipe is my tweaked version of a Joy of Cooking standard, and one of these days I'll type it up and share it with you because this cake is a winner: beautiful, delicious, and quick, especially if you possess one of those fine old-fashioned apple peeler-corer-slicers.

Once I finish this essay, I'm hoping I can transfer some of that momentum to poetry. I need to start thinking seriously about organizing a new collection; I need to start trudging through my own rough and rocky fields. I'll be on the road so much during the next few months. I've got so many work and family obligations. But surely the poems will come to me. Because I want them so much.

I spent much of yesterday with young Chuck, my sticky shadow, who preferred to keep me in sight at all times. Every time I sat down, there he was, coiling himself against shoulder or hip, climbing into my lap to lick my face. At night he immediately got into bed with me (which has not generally been his pattern) and curled against my cheek for the next eight hours. That was annoying, but I more or less put up with it because the poor kid is clearly in need of reassurance. Here's hoping he has a more relaxed Friday.

Today I'll get onto my mat and then turn my thoughts to a small editing project before going back to revising the Baron essay. My work life, it seems, is about to undergo yet another shift. I was contacted a few days ago by the editor-in-chief of the press where Baron had worked for years as the primary developmental editor: that is, the person who reads accepted manuscripts and shares advice about organization, infelicities, poem choice, and so on--not copyediting (which focuses on line issues such as spelling and punctuation) but holistic commentary on the overall presentation of the collection. The editor-in-chief wondered if I might want to take on this job. I thought about it and decided yes. The work won't accrue into a lot of hours, but it is paid and will allow me to step away, at least occasionally, from the copyediting grind. So I'm pleased . . . to be honest, I'm really kind of chuffed to have been invited to take over for the man. Somehow his generosity continues, even after death.

I should get off this couch and start dragging the recycling and compost outside for pickup, but a fire is crackling in the stove and I would much rather stay here and watch it. Though I dearly love the cottage, I'm glad to be back in my tidy shabby familiar nest. I'll roast mackerel for dinner; the World Series begins tonight. Go, Canadians! Have a sweet day, friends.

I taught all day yesterday--a really good and lively class, I'm glad to report. Then Tom picked me up and drove us home through pouring rain, and after we unloaded the truck, I went out again into the pouring rain to fetch home young Chuck.

So now our little pack has been reunited. Chuck appears to have grown several inches while in custody, and he came home bewildered . . . happy to see us, but very confused by why and what and where. Fortunately, the comfort of bed seems to have reassured him, and I woke up this morning with his cheek pressed against mine, just like old times. In his short life he's had so much uproar: born into chaos, then the coils of foster care, then a calm stint with us, and then suddenly the cat kennel, which I'm sure felt like a return to the dark, no matter how nice they were to him, and I do know they were nice.

Well, today I will devote myself to him. I've got various catch-up things to accomplish--laundry, housework--but I can certainly make the kitten the center of attention if he needs that. I'd like to work on my Baron essay, and I'd like to go out to write tonight. I want to take a walk. I want to wander in my garden. I have a small editing assignment awaiting me, but I won't look at it until tomorrow. Today is about remembering home.

On this dark morning Monson is cocooned in fog. Truck headlights slice through, heading toward work in Dover-Foxcroft or Greenville. A few windows shimmer.

Yesterday morning I sat in the cottage and finished the first draft of my Baron essay. It's got a few holes, but essentially it is there, beginning to end. The writing has been a huge task, one I wasn't very sure I could accomplish. I am still not sure I have accomplished it. However, something exists.

Then, in the afternoon, we left the island and wound our way into the interior. The sea feels very far from this solid land of lake and ledge and tree. And now here I sit, wishing for coffee, which I can't get until the store opens at 6:30, and trying to cast my memory over the teaching plans I prepped a week ago and haven't thought much about since.

I do know we'll be working with Sappho fragments, writing drafts that play with ideas of swelling and shrinkage. But my mind is distracted, a little sleepy, enwrapped in essay, fogged over.

After last night's gale, the cove is a slow band of ripples. A breeze trembles the sodden hedgerows, and the spruce trees shiver in their granite beds. The sky is streaked with cloud and a few raindrops swirl.

It is our last morning here till April. Yesterday, before the storm, T chainsawed up some fallen cedar and we carted the logs to our friend's woodpile. Cedar doesn't put out much heat, but it is sweet-scented and crackly, lovely in an open fireplace. Then we drove out to Long Pond and did a five-mile hike over Western Mountain, nearly deserted on an autumn Monday. Now and again rain spat into the lake. The forest was mossy--dark spruce and fir glowering under the impending storm, the hardwoods bright glimpses of gold and red.

Now I sit in front of the big glowing wood stove, coffee pot hissing, wind wailing in the chimney. Maybe we'll go out for a last clamber over rocks. Maybe we'll stay snug. After lunch we'll head west, back to the mainland, skirting Bangor, following Route 15 into the homeland, our old familiar landscape of forest and shack, rough fields, weary towns, slow hills, long low sky.

 I had a visitation from Baron last night in my dreams. He looked and acted like himself, though he was driving a Mustang. I looked and acted like myself, though I was also immersed in my familiar dream distress about forgetting to feed my goats. In this dream it was my job to empty out the barn, scrub it clean, right down to the concrete floor. Then, and only then, would Baron show me how to repair the cracks. And I did get that barn clean, the cleanest barn floor you ever saw, webbed with almost invisible cracks. But of course the dream faded away before I learned how to fix them.

Yesterday morning we drove over to Ship Harbor to watch the waves crash on the rocks, then spent the afternoon on a somewhat too cold deck overlooking the marina at Southwest Harbor watching an 80-year-old gravel-voiced powerhouse named Roberta sing and strut and play the piano. It was pretty great.

Today we'll probably get out for a more serious hike, and we'll need to do some firewood chores for our friend before the rain comes in. But for the moment I am recovering from my visitation. My dead friend Jilline still visits me regularly. But Ray has never visited me. I did not expect Baron, and here he was.

This was Goose Cove yesterday afternoon.

We arrived just before 4, stopping first for crab sandwiches and the No Kings rally in Ellsworth, then for a walk through Nature Conservancy land on Indian Point. The temperature has been mild, in the 50s day and night, and now sea air filters into the cottage as I start a wood fire crackling in the big stove. An open window and a warm wood stove: it's one of the great luxuries.

Usually we're here a couple of weeks later in the season, when the leaves have fallen and the weather has stiffened. But this year we've arrived during the sweet height of autumn. Though the drought has dimmed the tree colors, they're still laden. Asters bloom in the hedgerows, and wandering clusters of nuthatches peep like little kazoo orchestras. 

Now, at sunrise, this is the cove. The lobster boats are at work, engines grumbling, lights ablaze, as the lavender clouds unroll. One crow shouts, then another. I stand in the yard, amazed to be bare-legged outside at 7 a.m. in mid-October Maine, a little too cold, yes, but persevering a moment longer before returning to coffee and wood fire.

This afternoon we're going out with our friend to listen to a jazz show in Southwest Harbor. That's the only plan on the schedule, other than chicken on the grill for dinner. Maybe we'll climb a mountain or clamber over rocks on the shore. Maybe we'll stack firewood. Maybe we'll wrap ourselves in coats and sit in the yard and read. Maybe it will be a good day to be wordless.

Saturday morning. I still have all of my packing to do, but the groceries are in the house, the laundry is done, the editing project is shipped, and Little Chuck is at the cat motel. I think we're going to try to time our arrival so we can take part in the No Kings rally in Southwest Harbor, if I can get myself pulled together.

We'll be traveling heavy, with a chainsaw and its accessories and possibly our bikes, as well as the usual coolers and baskets and boots and books and games and water supply. I've decided to bring along The Waves and Trollope's Barchester Towers, plus Anne Carson's Sappho translations and the ms of Baron's new collection.

I wonder what I'll actually find myself reading.

I am feeling lighter, with the big editing project temporarily off my shoulders. I'll have a couple of smaller projects waiting for me when I get home, but this breathing space is a boon. I might actually spend the weekend not thinking about either teaching or editing . . . though the essay still looms large.

We love the cottage for many reasons--the sea outside the window, the cozy sweet shabbiness, our old friend across the yard. It does not belong to us, but also it does. I'll dig in the garden. T will cut up tree limbs. A lobster boat will idle in the cove. Bluejays will quarrel in the spruce trees. Chimney smoke will tremble in a cloud of drizzle.

Friday, cool and dark. All week I've been able to sleep in a bit, thanks to Tom's uneven work schedule, and  this small respite has been really helpful. My health is better, my general weariness is lifting, and I've been able to buckle down and get things done during the day. Yesterday I did indeed finish the editing assignment, and this morning I'll pull together the bits and pieces and send the files to the author, then turn my attention to travel prep: laundry, meal plotting, groceries, packing, plant watering, waving tearful adieu to Little Chuck.

Always the burning question: what books do I bring? And how much work will I actually accomplish there? The cottage is a famous place for doing nothing in particular, no matter how I plan otherwise. There we are, two energetic people on vacation in the middle of a national park, and are we climbing Cadillac? Are we making art? No, we are lolling on a beat-up wing chair, drinking coffee from a mug named Ernie, eying a Louise Penny mystery, and considering a 10 a.m. nap.

It's possible that won't happen again on this visit, but I have my doubts.

On the other hand, maybe in the quiet mornings I'll write a few more pages of my Baron essay. I'll mull over hazy thoughts of my next collection. I'll read Virginia Woolf with care and attention. Who knows?

Last week's bad-news birthday was a sucker punch, and I've had no chance, or desire, to undergo my annual take-stock-of-who-I-am reflections. I am now 61 years old . . . that's a lot of old, and I ought to take a look at it and ponder what's going on. Maybe that's what I'll end up doing at the cottage: I'll think about being.

Or I'll venture into the drizzle, perch myself on a pile of broken granite, and stare at seabirds rocking wildly in the surf,

Another cool morning, though we haven't had a frost yet. Still, by late afternoon it feels good to set match to paper and feel the first flames of warmth lick up from the kindling.

The next couple of days will be busy. I hope to finish my editing project this morning. And Thursday is my usual housework day--bathrooms and floors and general tidying. Today and tomorrow I've got to start pulling myself together for our trip to the island on Saturday. Poor Little Chuck has to go to the cat kennel tomorrow, and I'm sorrowful about dropping him off in a strange place. But he is too young to stay alone in the house and has too many gut issues for a long car ride.

Tonight I'll go out to write; tomorrow I'll do the grocery shopping for the cottage and attempt some sort of reasonable packing strategy. We will be on the island for a few days, then in Monson overnight so that I can teach the next day, then home that afternoon. So I'll have to pack camp clothes and school clothes, books for the cottage and books for work. Clearly I won't be traveling light.

But for the moment I am allowing myself to be quiet. The clock ticks. The refrigerator hums. The books on the table whisper among themselves. The walls of this house are a fragile shell. Above the roof, the universe lofts its uneasy weight.

T goes back to work today, but with a later start than usual so we've had yet another small respite from the alarm clock.

Despite my small wake-up holiday, I've been editing hard all week and have nearly caught up to where I should be, schedule-wise. And I've prepped for my Monson class, finished the Ondaatje novel, and spent time with The Waves and Alice Notley's The Descent of Alette. Work is getting done.

Today will be more scattershot. I'll need to drive my car back to the garage for an inspection sticker. I'm walking with a friend early; then another friend is dropping by in the afternoon because he needs to mourn Baron in company. Maybe, after he leaves, I'll work in the garden--cut down a few more dying perennials, spread a few more bags of soil. I don't know what my state of mind will be, but I am beginning to feel less tired . . . less wrung out, anyway.

In a few minutes I'll get showered, get dressed, get moving. I'll deal with laundry, dishes, firewood, litter box. I'll drop off the car, make breakfast, kiss Tom goodbye. I'll prepare to be sociable.

But always, behind the busyness, the rattle of loneliness. A pebble in a cavern. It echoes.

Somehow, though the wind whipped and the skies glowered, we never got a drop of rain yesterday. Such a disappointment. I long for days of wet, but the drought goes on and on.

Tuesday. T is home again, so I am allowing myself another slowish start before I trudge up to my desk. I'll finish editing a chapter, then turn my thoughts to high school plans. I'll get onto my mat; I'll return a library book; I'll figure out something for dinner.

In the meantime the big kitten curls against my shoulder and purrs into my ear. Dear little Charles. He glows with such cheerful light.

Today Vox Populi has published "Don't Tell Me You Don't Know What Love Is," my elegy to Ray. I didn't choose the timing but it is poignant. Ray died last October, while we were staying at the cottage in West Tremont. And now it is another October, and we'll drive out again to the cottage on Saturday.

I wrote a note to myself while cooking dinner the other night: "In a way it is romantic to grow old." All of the loves gathering round.

Monday morning, and Tom is still asleep. Because he's being shifted from one house assignment to another, he's ended up with a couple of empty days, so he's taking them off, and I'm glad for him. We're heading to West Tremont next weekend for our autumn visit to the cottage, which means he'll have time off next week too, and that's a very good thing. He works so hard; too hard. Being an aging laborer is not an easy life.

But I'll be at work today. I'm already behind schedule on the editing project, thanks to being sick for three weeks. And I need to prep for next week's high school class and return to my Poetry Kitchen plans and keep grinding away at the Baron essay.

Still, I was able to sleep a bit late, and I can sit here quietly for a little longer than usual. I'll get out for my walk before the rains begin. Even though I have to work, I feel less rushed than I usually do on a Monday morning.

I did get another few pages done on the Baron essay yesterday, and I did attend to my poem draft. I weeded and deadheaded dahlias and spread new soil in the garden boxes. I fell asleep, hard, for two hours. I made baked penne with fresh sauce and leftover lamb. I made quick pickles. I listened to an hour of baseball and was delighted to learn that the Blue Jays' radio broadcast is sponsored by "Armstrong Bird Food." For some reason that struck me as hilarious.

And today the rains will come. And I might start a fire in the wood stove early, to celebrate. And I'l make fish chowder for dinner because chowder is a rainy-day comfort.

We are snug here. And I am still feeling kind of lost.

I slept badly for most of the night, then fell asleep hard at around 4 and didn't wake until after 6. I do appreciate these unclocked weekend mornings. So many years and years of 5 a.m. alarms . . . it's been wearing. I'm naturally an early riser, but there's something exhausting about being constantly told what to do.

The house is quiet. Tom and Chuck are still a-bed. I hear a distant growl of traffic. I hear a crow.

Yesterday I tore out the cucumber, bean, and cherry tomato plants. I took down the groundhog fencing, pulled up stakes and trellises, emptied flowerpots, lugged everything into the shed for storage or to the leaf pile for composting. I cleaned and trimmed the garlic that had been curing in the shed. I chopped hot peppers for the freezer. I simmered a batch of sauce.

And I worked on a poem, the first I've attempted for many weeks.

The garden isn't bare. There's still kale and chard and lettuce. I left the okra and pepper plants. Marigolds and nasturtiums and zinnias and dahlias are blooming wildly.

I wish I could say that my poem draft is also blooming wildly. But I'm not sure what it's doing. At least it exists, and at least I am attending to it.

My plan today is to do some weeding and then start spreading bagged compost over the garden beds and boxes. And to read Woolf's The Waves and Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion. And to attend to that poem draft.

What I am is tired.

Saturday morning dark. Coffee steams in a white cup. A big kitten full of breakfast leans against my shoulder and purrs lustily into my left ear. Outdoors the air is chilly, but in the house dregs of warmth still rise from last night's wood fire.

I have nothing on the calendar, nowhere I have to go. My plan for the weekend is to work in the garden, work in the kitchen, work on Baron's essay, work on my own poems. I'll probably treat Monday like a regular weekday as I'm unsure if Tom has the day off. (His schedule is temporarily weird.)

The living room is shadowy. On the mantle Baron's dahlias are rosy and subdued in the gray light. The kitchen clock ticks. The refrigerator growls. The books on the table are mysterious.

Yesterday afternoon Teresa, Jeannie, and I met on zoom to talk about Baron. For all of us his death has been a blow, not least because he was the one who brought us together. I met Jeannie at his house in Hallowell. I met Teresa at the Frost Place when I was his assistant at the teaching conference. That was the kind of thing he did: he saw who needed each other, and he opened a door.

It's hard to overstate how lonely I was as a writer in Harmony. I had made two friends at poetry retreats; yet though they were real friends (and remain so), neither clung to poetry with my obsessive seriousness. But Baron not only taught me; he led me into a world of real ambition: not for place or prize, but for poetry itself. As a Romantic, I was starry-eyed. This was what being a poet could mean. This was the life I dreamed of.

And in many ways it is the life I have lived, the life that Baron showed me was possible. To make poetry the center of my days. To bring words into conversation with the work of my hands. To become more generous to other people. To take the risk of saying something that is almost impossible to say.

Last October, Ray died, and with him a certain wildness in me died. But Baron's death has left me in a different state of mind. In all the years I knew him, he was constantly working to give me to myself. He strove to keep me from depending on his opinion. He pushed me into teaching situations that I didn't think I was ready for. He gave me friends and then detached himself, let us swim away into our own futures. His goal as a teacher was to teach himself out of a job, and that's a motto I have since shared many times in my own classes and conferences.

Yes, I do feel like an orphan. But also I feel like a poet.

Outside the temperature is 34 degrees and inside the furnace is running for the first time this season. Maybe we didn't quite get a frost, but it was close.

Yesterday afternoon I picked all of the Serranos, the only one of my pepper plants that came to anything in the drought--though it was supposed to be a hot pepper and the fruits are not, so what's the explanation for that? I picked a few tiny eggplants and the last of the cherry tomatoes and a bouquet of basil. But I let the beans and cucumbers ride: they have more than done their duty for every other vegetable this summer.

The day was busy. I cleaned house, finished most of an editing chapter, and walked down the street to pick up our first CSA delivery, a beautiful bundle of carrots, potatoes, peppers, spinach, and scallions, with a fat spaghetti squash on the side. When Tom got home, we drove to Yarmouth to fetch my car from the mechanic. I made a batch of biscuits and took them with me when I went out to write.

And now it's Friday. In a few minutes I'll deal with recycling and trash and compost. I'll get sheets started in the washing machine. I'll do my exercises and answer emails and get back to my editing. I'll go to the grocery store and have a zoom meeting.

Behind all of this busyness, the memory of Baron shifts in my mind like small ripples in a cove. He was a gardener, with a special love for flowers. He cared about the work of the hands: digging soil, splitting wood. Our chores were a bond, as much as our passion for words.

I am doing my chores.

I spent so much time talking yesterday--blessedly, over coffee with Gretchen, then over the phone with Teresa, then another phone call with my sister, then via countless notes that I still haven't fully waded through. I did manage to do some editing around the edges, but the sorrow words were heavy. "That's not bad, though," said Tom, after he got home later in the afternoon. I was standing wanly in the kitchen, surely looking overwhelmed. But he was right. It's been more than not bad. It's been necessary. When a beloved writer dies, words are the mourning.

Last October, after Ray died, Tom and I and our boys knew that we were not officially family, but we were nonetheless treated by the real family as part of them, given our long and complex closeness. This time around there's a starker difference. I'm in no way family. But I know I do stand in a unique place: I was Baron's student who became his colleague and then the chosen heir of his program. He brought me up, and then he trusted me to carry on a sliver of his work. There was certainly a kind of parentalism involved, but also, in later years, there was a detachment. He didn't oversee me. He left me alone to find my own way of managing the conference. I wonder if that was difficult or easy.

Today I need to continue working my way through the emails. I need to clean the house. I need to get more editing done. My car is still in the shop, but supposedly it will be ready sometime today. I dearly hope I'll go out to write tonight. I've missed two weeks in a row and I'm lonely for my poets.

Ah, sorrow.

My dear mentor, Baron Wormser, died yesterday, only weeks after being diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. He died at home, quietly, with his wife and children and sister present. It was, his wife tells me, a good death.

I told her that I don't know whether the fact he died on my birthday is a weight or a lightness.

I told her that Baron made me, as a poet. He gave me myself.

Tom took me out for dinner last night and we had a celebration/wake.

My car got towed away to the shop. My phone is pulsing with love notes and sorrow notes. Apparently something shitty happened in the public realm yesterday, but I haven't been able to look at the news yet.

A small rain is falling. The scent rises through the open window.

 Last night after dinner we got into the car and Steve drove us down the dark gravel roads to Kingsbury Pond so we could look at the moon over the water. How long it's been since I've been out on these roads after dark! And the moon was a glowing dinner plate, and the dog quietly splashed in the shallows, and Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" laughed to itself on the car radio, and the windows were rolled down, and a quiet wildness spread among us, because here we were. Here we were.

Meanwhile another friend is dying.

Meanwhile today is my 61st birthday.

 

When we lived in Harmony, we often climbed nearby Borestone Mountain on one of the weekends surrounding my birthday. Now that we live in Portland, we go to the ocean, most often the Wells Estuarine Reserve at Laudholm Farm.

Yesterday, on a blue-sky, soft-air October Sunday morning, we stood barefoot in the surging North Atlantic and watched flocks of piping plovers wheel over the sand, then suddenly land together and run back and forth into the foam like little windup toys. We heard the cries of a yellowlegs, glimpsed hawks among the reddening trees, watched distant seabirds ride the waves. Our lungs were full of wind, our eyes full of sun. The hour was sheer delight.

A visit to the sea was a good way to counter my next few stressful days of driving and teaching and dealing with car sorrows. Tomorrow is my birthday, and I'll be spending it in class and on the road--not my dream celebration by any means, but on the bright side I'm staying tonight with homeland dear ones, so that will make things much better. This morning I'll gather my bits and pieces around me. I'll go for a walk with a friend. I'll borrow a car that knows how to pass inspection. I'll remember those flocks of plovers spinning over the glittering surf like a single thought.

Yesterday for dinner I made stuffed shells for maybe the first time since 1980: cooked down a small batch of fresh sauce, hand-mashed a small batch of fresh pesto, then mixed the pesto into a filling of ricotta, diced chicken, and prosciutto. For salad we had our usual green beans and cucumbers--nothing new at this time of year but still delicious. And then we ate the last two slices of apple pie. So, as you can see, my not-thrilling week got off to an encouraging start . . . the ocean, the garden, a copy of Mansfield Park lying open on the kitchen counter.

Four jars of golden tomato catsup! I haven't canned anything for several years so was pleased by how smoothly the process went. Canning is always fussy and cumbersome, but a batch of neat handsome jars is extremely satisfying, and yesterday's project went off without a hitch. Homemade catsup is an entirely different beast from bottled red ketchup. It's real food, with a complex and delicate flavor and an airy texture, and in our house it's always been a rare treat because it requires a lot of tomatoes. I was lucky to have half a bushel of giant yellow fruits ripen in the house simultaneously . . . and to have time to simmer them down for two days.

In and among my canning project, I spent a lot of yesterday working on the Baron essay. Finally, after a week of poking hopelessly at the first two paragraphs, I've been able to let myself go and start really writing. As of now, I've got five pages of a draft. There's much more to come, of course, but I do feel like something's come unstuck in me, writing-wise. For a few days I was wondering if I'd be able to do it at all, and that was not a good feeling.

In a few minutes T and I are going to head out for an early breakfast in Biddeford and then take our seasonal morning hike through the seaside bird sanctuary at Laudholm Farm in Wells. Afterward I'll get back to cutting down perennials in the garden. I'll reread the essay draft. I'll listen to the Blue Jays trounce the Yankees (I hope). I'll make stuffed shells for dinner.

Tomorrow I'll be on the road again, with a borrowed car to keep me nervous. Tuesday is my birthday but I'll be in class and driving all day long. Wednesday I'll be bleeding money for car repairs. I'm fluttery and anxious, and trying not to be.

 At 5 a.m. Chuck turned on the bedroom light (it's touch-sensitive, unfortunately) and then began patting my cheek with his paw and licking my eyelids: "Just wondering if you're awake, Dawn. Are you awake? Are you, are you, are you?" Standard invasive cat behavior, but he sure does know how to cloak it in wide-eyed innocence. So, yes, the answer is, I am awake, and the kitten is now full of breakfast, and we are curled up together with a couch blanket, and everything has turned out exactly like Chuck hoped it would.

Yesterday evening I lit the wood stove for the first time this season--just a small fire to take the edge off the modest chill and also to see how young Charles would react. He was thrilled by the flickering flames but thus far seems sensibly wary about getting too close to hot metal. Let's hope that continues to be true.

We really didn't need a fire last night. I could have put on another sweater. But few things are as sweet as sitting by the embers with a beloved and a silly kitten. Coziness is a great comfort, and why not be happy.

I think I've finally blocked out the entire long-poem class. The syllabus will need refining, but it now, thank goodness, exists from beginning to end. This is among the more complex online classes I've invented--so much material to get through, as well as a great deal of planned interaction--so carving it out has been challenging. But the hardest part is now done, and I can let it stew for a few days before I start picking at it again.

I've also made a bit of progress on the Baron retrospective and hope that I can find time to do more on it this weekend. I still have to can the catsup I made earlier in the week, and I want to do some yard work, and T and I are going to drive down to the bird sanctuary tomorrow for a walk along the salt marsh. But with the Poetry Kitchen planning more or less out of my hair, maybe I'll have the wherewithal to make some real progress on this very difficult essay.

Life is kind of overwhelming at the moment. The car troubles are a heavy blow, and that sinus infection has kicked me in the head, and friends are in pain, and my work responsibilities are unwieldy. But it's Saturday morning, and I am sitting with my little cat under my new birthday lamp. I'm drinking my second small cup of coffee. Rosy dahlias adorn the mantle. The refrigerator is groaning in exactly the way it's supposed to groan. The books on the table smile at me. Oh, world. You are a mysterious lover.

Excellent news: T and I solved our refrigerator problem on our own. After I discovered that the air-flow ducts between the compartments were plugged with frost, T unloaded the food into coolers and we defrosted overnight. Now everything works perfectly. Also all of the frozen food stayed frozen, so I didn't lose any of my hard work.

Other good news: A stalwart friend has offered me her car for Monday and Tuesday so I can get to Monson without a rental.

Moderately okay news: I found a repair guy who promises to fix the car's steering next Wednesday, a week earlier than the dealer could even look at it.

Unhappy news: A rack-and-pinion job costs $2,000. Tom, who for some reason is playing Mr. Look-on-the-Bright-Side in this farce, points out that the dealer would likely charge twice as much. So we are pretending to be delighted.

I have been having fantasies of giving up the car altogether, but that isn't feasible, with my parents in Vermont and my job in the hinterlands. But I am not altogether unhappy to be carless for a few days. The library is today's only errand, and I can walk there. If I decide I need a few groceries, they are around the corner, but house and garden are already well stocked.

Last night for dinner I braised chicken thighs with Vidalia onions, sweet peppers, garlic, and oregano. I made a salad of two kinds of tomatoes: greeny-red cherries and bright-red Brandywines. I baked a chard tian. I steamed a pot of arborio rice. I made a quick apple pie, using leftover pie dough I'd stowed in the freezer. No need for driving anywhere. The food was all here.

I spent much of yesterday (when I wasn't housecleaning or blowing my nose or consorting on the telephone with various repair people) focused on my current editing project. And I did manage to finish the chapter, which means that I can devote the bulk of today's work hours to class prep and my Baron essay. The dream of working on a poem is still a dream.

Yesterday turned out to be a classic oh-for-fuck-sake day. First, our refrigerator stopped working; the repair guys can't come out till next week; I scrambled to borrow coolers and cold packs, and T and I tried to figure things out on our own, which maybe we did or maybe we didn't. In any case, we defrosted it over night and will turn it on again this morning and find out something.

Then what I thought would be a routine get-my-car-inspected day exploded like a bomb: my car won't pass inspection because there's a problem with the rack-and-pinion steering, which is too complex a job for my regular mechanic, which will cost the earth, and which means that the car is presently unsafe to drive.

I'm supposed to be heading north to Monson on Monday and Tuesday, so I guess I'll be renting a car?

I spent all day feeling unhappy, full of dread about dropping this weight on Tom, wondering how I can be almost 61 years old and still limping through vehicles like a teenager.

But when he came home, and I told him the bad news, he was calm, he was helpful, he was soothing, he was all of the things that I love him for. And then he gave me a birthday present: a new lamp for the living room, which we've sorely needed.

The two of us have been through so many shitty household emergencies in our years together. Sometimes I think that's our closest bond. We look at each other and say, What next?

That was a fantastic Yankees-Red Sox game last night: hard won, well played, with a happy Sox ending. I've never expected this team to go far in the playoffs, but yesterday's game had old-fashioned style, and I had so much fun listening to it play out on the radio.

And then I had a long elaborate dream about a tree-lined campus, famous poets in book-filled rooms, everyone writing or engaged in eager conversation, lots of children here and there doing interesting projects, including a boy I seemed to be in charge of, and, strangely, everyone knew who I was, which made me extremely nervous through the entire dream. Was this supposed to be heaven? Or was it purgatory?

Well, whatever the case, I've returned to my everyday land. Chuck is tucked up against my leg, and the coffee is hot, and T is upstairs thunking dresser drawers and sighing. It is Wednesday, the first day of October. The air is cool and quiet in the little northern city by the sea.

This morning I need to take my car to the garage for an inspection. I'll put in some time on the essay about Baron, then turn back to editing. I'll reread my plans for the long-poem class, which are now about half done. I'll start cooking down tomato sauce for catsup.

I'd like to think I'll work on a poem draft. Or mull over my next collection. Or do something for the sake of my own thoughts. But that may be too much to hope for.