I finally managed to get that Ship Harbor video to load, so here it is--a replacement for any newer photos because we didn't visit the park yesterday. Instead, we spent much of it doing this and that for our friend . . . well, mostly Tom doing this and that, tacking up sagging insulation, lugging trash, moving a toolbox, and other such little chores, while I messed around in the garden. Other than that, and making a bolognese sauce for dinner, my biggest accomplishment was revising a chunk of Awake at the Olympus. This actually did feel like a major step--my first real run-through of the manuscript in which I was able to see it with any sort of clarity. I never find it easy to revise at the manuscript level (rather than the individual poem level), but I'm learning that a linked narrative has its own special blinders.

Today we're going out for a hike somewhere, though I don't know where yet. But no one is in a rush . . . slow waking, slow coffee, an idle fire in the stove. The lobster boat putts across the cove. Clouds puff along the horizon. Chuckie crunches his chow.

Sorry I'm a bit late writing to you this morning, but the blog platform has been recalcitrant, the wood stove has been grumpy, and Chuck slept in instead of squeaking Breakfast, breakfast, breakfast! and licking my eyelids at 4:30 a.m.

For some reason the blog does not want to post the photos I took yesterday, but finally it has decided you can look at this picture of Chuck on the screened porch being amazed by a robin. He also had the thrill of seeing his first-ever turkeys yesterday. As far as Chuck is concerned, vacation is fabulous on all counts--visitors! birds! everyone home!--though he remains suspicious of the coffeemaker.

We didn't go on any extravagant hikes yesterday, partly because we were lazy, partly because trails were still sodden from the previous day's rain. But we did drive to Ship Harbor to clamber over rocks and watch the grebes and the eiders dive. I took a short video of high-tide waves crashing on granite, which apparently I'm not permitted to share with you (this blog platform is in a bad mood), but maybe you'd like to look at some lichen instead.

When I wasn't outside I was reading books, doing some mild cooking, taking a yoga class with my friend. I did pound out a little schoolwork, but not much. All day long the clouds were moody and beguiling, and last night's sunset was a stunner. And then I slept all night like I'd been pole-axed. Which is to say, vacation is going quite well so far.

Hey, the big news around here is that Chuck is a champ about vacation. First, he spent the three-hour car ride fast asleep in his crate . . . not a peep out of him the whole way, a vast change from Ruckus, who howled every moment he was in a car. Then, when he arrived, he carefully looked the cottage over, discreetly acknowledged his litterbox, greeted our friend for dinner, slept comfortably in bed all night, and now, this morning, he has enjoyed a good breakfast and is washing his face by the wood stove. He admits to being a little perturbed by the noise of an unfamiliar coffee maker, but otherwise he thinks vacation is extremely fun. (Pardon the unclear picture, but black cats are non-photogenic in low light.)

Tom had packed and loaded the car while I was in class, so we left almost immediately after I finished yesterday, which was good because the nights come in so early now and the island roads are overrun by deer. For years, hunting was prohibited on Mount Desert, so the deer population exploded. I think there is very controlled hunting in Tremont now, but so far it hasn't made much of a dent. The deer are everywhere, and they are not a bit shy. On a five-minute drive to pick up a pizza last night, I was stopped by four in the road at various places, all of them completely indifferent to traffic.

So here we are for a week, ensconced in the little cottage by the cove. Though the sky is beginning to lighten, the water is still invisible in the darkness. But when I open the porch door, I breathe in thick briny sea air and hear the first chuckles of the black ducks waking in the shallows.

Yet now I look up and see that night is rolling up its blanket--Swan's Island hunkers on the horizon, a long blue streak against the paler clouds, and the spruce-crowded coastline curls like crab claws around the little cove. The crackle of an engine kicks at the quiet--a lobster boat starting out on its trap rounds. And I can see that the tide is high, see ripples folding toward the shore, see jagged boulders shrinking into islets. Above everything, blue-gray clouds, low-slung and heavy,  as dramatic as a Turner painting.

It's a dark, wet morning, and I woke too early, mostly because of fretting about packing. We're planning to head to the island right after I finish teaching today. Tom will deal with food and cat packing while I'm at work, but I haven't cast even one thought toward suitcase and book bag, and my overnight brain would not let me forget that.

Now here I sit, still not packing but at least the stupid nighttime worry button has been disengaged. A fire crackles in the stove. Chuckie leans against my shoulder and purrs into my ear. I'm happy we're bringing him along with us to the cottage. I think he'll have fun, once he recovers from his perplexity.

In the meantime, I've got another day of work ahead. It's a very full class, and the drafts that people are writing have been so interesting. I never know what will happen when I create these classes, but the Grimm tales certainly have been potent. Because of how I've designed the prompts, I haven't really been able to write alongside everyone else this weekend, but actually that's been okay. My brain is still full of Awake at the Olympus, and I don't want my imagination to veer away from that concentration. It's gratifying enough to enjoy everyone else's drafts.

Tomorrow, when I write to you, I'll be back on the island, staring out into November light as it unfolds over Goose Cove. Tom is so excited to go. He cannot wait to be there. I'll pack, I'll drive, I'll do all the work, as long as we can leave today, he urged. He knows me: I would be slow, I'd wait till tomorrow morning, I'd milk out one more night at home. But he is eager, eager, and I love that too. So off we go.

It rained yesterday afternoon, and all night, and is supposed to rain today and into tomorrow . . . we haven't had this much precipitation in months. Though temperatures are still on the mild side, I lit a fire in the stove this morning, just to drive off the dankness.

Later this morning I'll be leaping into a brand-new weekend poetry class, but for now life feels pretty calm. And happily I'm also feeling a fresh surge of writing excitement. Yesterday, during our zoom visit, Jeannie and Teresa both gave me so many good ideas for tweaks to Awake at the Olympus. The suggestions are small but significant, and I'm excited to start fiddling with them, once I'm out to grass for the week. I'm so grateful to have such sharp-witted, sympathetic readers. I love the characters in this manuscript. They have come alive to me; they live beyond my imagination now. They are reaching off the page to other readers, and this feels immensely sweet.

My first literary idol was Charles Dickens. His characters slayed me. When I was a little girl, I thought nothing could be more wonderful than to invent such worlds. A lifetime later, I'm not sure I've changed my mind.

Another warmish morning, this time with a soaking rain on the horizon. The air is already full of moisture, and my hair, after reverting to winter straightness, has returned to its curly summer ways. I haven't lit the wood stove in three days, which feels so odd in November. And yet brief daylight, heaps of leaves on sidewalks, bare maples craning over houses: the streets of this little city are a portrait of late autumn.

Yesterday I sent off an editing sample to the author I'm working for, which means I'm on editing hiatus until he responds. So today will be full of this-n-thats: my exercise class at the Y, tidying up my study before I teach in it all weekend, talking with Teresa and Jeannie during our Poetry Lab zoom. I doubt I'll get any raking done outside, given the rainy forecast, but maybe.

I did go out to my writing group last night, and I did produce two so-called drafts, but since I finished Awake at the Olympus I haven't written a real poem. I shouldn't repine over that, but I do. Not writing makes me feel blank, no matter how busy I'm keeping myself, or how much I need a rest. Right now I'm not particularly tired or overwhelmed by other obligations. I could certainly fit a new poem project into the interstices, but no. I have reverted to once, long ago, last week, I was a poet. 

Yesterday's weather was bizarrely warm, and I think we've got a few more unseasonable days ahead before temperatures settle back into typical November. I opened windows upstairs and down, glad to have a chance to air out the fug that always settles into a closed-up house. 

After an insane October, I'm realigning into a more familiar work pattern: big editing project punctuated by teaching days. But I'm also looking forward to a bit of a respite. This weekend I'll be leading my next online Poetry Kitchen session, and then afterward T and Chuckie and I are going up to the cottage for our semiannual stay on Mount Desert Island. We'll be there longer than usual this time--for most of a week--and Chuck is coming with us, an adventure for all.

I'll probably do some editing while we're at the cottage, but I'm also hoping to think about chapbook organization, catch up with my Berryman reading, maybe step back from Awake at the Olympus and consider what I've actually made. But in fact none of this is crucial. I don't have a tight editing deadline, and if all I do is read murder mysteries and take naps at strange times of the day, well, then so be it.

Today, however, is a work day. I'll go for my walk, deal with laundry, edit, prep for the weekend class. Maybe I'll rake leaves or clear out garden beds. I'll pick up our CSA order and bake an orange cake for tonight's writing group. I like these days when I need to mix up brain work with housework. I like watching new daylight stain the night sky. I like listening to crows bark in the maples. I like knowing that T gets to sleep in a little this morning instead of rushing off into a long day of labor.

Here's some John Clare for you--crazy, confused, adoring John, that lonely Romantic, so obssessed with his landscape, the plants and animals. I wonder how he and William Blake would have gotten along, if they'd ever happened to meet.

Autumn

John Clare

The thistledown's flying, though the winds are all still,

On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,

The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;

Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot.

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,

The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.

The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,

And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.

Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,

And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run;

Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;

Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

Good morning, Americans! By which I mean holy shit!

What a rout! I can't decide if I feel more like an upside-down Labrador retriever scratching my back in spring grass or more like an exploding fountain of tears. After 30 years, Maine's red Senate seat has flipped blue. Susan Collins is gone. Hurray for Troy!

I'm relieved, but not surprised, that Hannah Pingree will be our next governor. Her mother Chellie Pingree was a solid shoo-in for first district U.S. Rep. But our second district situation is almost as amazing as the Senate flip: LePage and Dunlap look like they're headed for a run-off election. I never expected Dunlap to make a dent in the conservative towns, but he has been fully competitive.

And then there's Texas, and Kansas, and South Carolina . . . What a massive relief. It's dizzying.

Tonight Tom and I are going out to the movies to watch the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup. Hail Fredonia, pals! Here's to better times ahead!

It was a beautiful day for a drive north yesterday, and then last night I slept like a rock--and not like a small stone; more like a granite boulder. So I am waking up this morning with fresh air creeping through the open window and the sound of someone else lighting the stove and making coffee downstairs--a vacationy feeling, despite the fact that I have to hoick myself up and go to work.

Today my class will be focusing on details. We'll play with using them to swell and shrink drafts in various ways, and along the way I think I'll talk a little with them about what I've been doing with my recent Sappho-prompted project. I don't usually use my own work as an example, but sometimes it seems pertinent. What happens when you set yourself up for mystery? If nothing else, I hope these young people learn the glory of surprise.

Chuckie is so perplexed by the time change. At 3:30 a.m. he is licking my face and peering affectionately up my nose, convinced that now is the best of all possible times for breakfast. I honor his sweet temper and his youthful appetite, but oy. I fear this transition to Eastern Standard Time is going to be rocky for a while yet.

This afternoon I'll be driving up to Wellington, spending the night in the homeland so that I can teach in Monson on Tuesday. I bet the leaves are mostly gone from the trees up there, though when Gretchen and I drove down to Ogunquit yesterday, we noticed that far southern Maine trees are still very leafy. This is such a variable state, climate-wise.

Gretch and I went to look at the Carl Sprinchorn paintings at the Ogunquit Museum. It was the last day of that show, but the parallel show at Bates College is still up for a little longer, if you want to see his work. I think I mentioned in a previous post that Sprinchorn was a Swedish-born painter who spent a lot of time painting in the Monson and the Katahdin areas in the early part of the 20th century. It's been instructive to spend time with his sketches and finished pieces, especially in the midst of our performance focus. 

Otherwise, I dealt with home stuff yesterday--baking bread, washing kitchen shelves, putting away outdoor furniture--while Tom continued his door project: installing a moisture barrier where the stoop will abut the house, painting trim, carving out slots for the post-holders in the concrete footer. Now that the days have become shorter, there's even less daylight available, and paint dries slowly in cool weather. I can't imagine we'll have a stoop before the snow flies, but maybe I'm wrong.

This morning I'll go for my walk, deal with bathrooms and floors, prep for class, catch up with emails, stare at the poems in the new manuscript. I'm feeling pretty lively this morning, despite Chuck's attempts to reset the clock. It will be a fine day for a drive, to think about word repetition, to trudge through leaves, to mop a floor, to consider foreshadowing and suspense, to breathe cool air, to kiss my sweetheart, to warm my hands by the stove. I look forward to it all.

We got zero trick-or-treaters last night, which was not a surprise, given our unwelcoming front-door situation. I did make an attempt to encourage kids to the side door, but the light's not all that visible from the road, and the entry is tucked way down the driveway behind two vehicles and a pile of construction debris. So it's no wonder the kids didn't notice us-- though even on a good year, this end of the street doesn't attract a lot of trick-or-treaters. I don't know why, as the neighborhood looks like a stereotypical little-kid Halloween paradise.

Chuckie is very confused by the time change, so mixed up that he hasn't even been able to eat his breakfast. I agree with him: it is odd to be writing to you in daylight. Outside, the air is cold and still. November is upon us, with a sudden simplicity of sky and branch.

Yesterday I may have finished the Sappho project, which I am going to stop calling the Sappho project and refer to from now on by its actual title, Awake at the Olympus, thirty-nine pages of linked poems about a family that is both myth and flesh. Three people have read in-process versions of the draft so far, and one of them is my younger son. A kind of cinematic fairy tale, he tells me. Yes. My mind is filled with the imagery of noir movie sets, and yet, because of my language obligations (every poem contains every word, or a sonic imitator, of one particular Sappho fragment), I can't help but accept the mythic overtones.

For copyright reasons, I won't share the fragment translation here, but I can give you the eleven required words in alphabetical order:

arms

come

daughters

graces

here

like

of

pure

roses

with

Zeus

Some words, like of, are almost invisible in the poems. Some, like Zeus, are flashing lights every time they appear. Some, like pure, are trickily invasive. Yet on the whole these poems have not been a struggle to write, and that's because graces and roses immediately morphed into Grace and Rose, sisters who developed distinct characters and became my emotional through-line.

I don't quite know what to do with myself now, or what to do with this manuscript. I guess I'll do nothing, for the moment anyway. The past few months have been full of surprise, poem-wise. First there was that crown of sonnets. And now this. I wonder what will happen next.

Hey, I'm spending an entire weekend at home, and I'm not teaching or performing or anything! And so far Saturday is off to a great start: fire in the stove, coffee in my cup, Chuckie on the hearth rug, Tom fast asleep in bed.

I feel much livelier than I did yesterday at this time and am looking forward to dealing with a big batch of homestead stuff over the next two days: pruning and clearing in the garden, stowing outdoor furniture, washing down kitchen shelves, getting rid of construction dust, harvesting chard and kale. I'm also looking forward to reading and writing. Yesterday I was able to get back to the Sappho project and added three more poems to the manuscript. I'm still working my way through Dos Passos's U.S.A. and have made a small dent in Berryman's Dream Songs. I might watch the Bills play the Ravens tomorrow afternoon. I need to acquire some Halloween candy today and figure out how to direct kids away from the unusable front door to the less visible side door.

I could add a host of other this-and-thats as well; but though this to-do list may seem ambitious, it's really mostly puttering. In truth, I'm just looking forward to messing around with my own stuff, bumping shoulders with Tom as he messes around with his projects, greeting young Chuck as he interferes enthusiastically.

A sunny cool day in the little northern city by the sea. Blue sky. Half-bare trees. A bright wind.

I am so tired that I can barely think in sentences this morning. So pardon any oddness in this post.

We had a packed house. We got a standing ovation. It was a great night. We had so many friends there. Tom took me out to dinner afterward and I could barely keep myself from sagging against the wall as we ate. Walking back to the truck felt like walking through deep snow. Did I brush my teeth before I went to bed? Possibly.

Now I have to gather my strength to haul trash and recycling to the curb. Ugh. Even making coffee was hard. I feel like I've been run over by a street sweeper.

How do performers go on tour? Or show up for a Broadway gig every night? Jeez.

Well, I expect I'll become less limp as the day advances. But it's been a long couple of weeks.

The show itself, though . . . performing in front of that sweet crowd was tremendous.

When I walked into the house after 10 last night, I was glad to find T curled up on the couch watching the World Series. I figured it would be my last chance to see baseball for the season, and so it was. The Brewers won the series the convincingly, playing a lovely old-fashioned version of small ball--not relying on home runs but on an onslaught of base hits that got them onto base and then running. I like a big blast as much as the next person, but small ball is fun because it is busy--always something happening on the base paths: hitters teasing pitchers, pitchers teasing hitters, base stealers, pickoffs, swanky double plays, and then a tiny defensive error that lets the runners explode.

But now the games are over, and I will tuck my baseball habit into hibernation for a few months. Outside, in the darkness, a train hoots. Inside, Chuckie loudly crunches up some chow. A new fire shimmers in the stove.

I'm a little bit sleepy. I was out late, and went to bed late, but got up at the same old workaday time. Maybe I can snag a nap this morning before the afternoon odyssey begins. Last night's tech rehearsal was mostly for lights and sound; the performers hung around doing nothing and were cold and slightly grumpy, which is, I think, a typical description of tech rehearsals. But this afternoon that will change: we will be in the throes of cue checks and walk-throughs and run-throughs and nerves. The space is gorgeous and is professionally staffed, which is a huge help, but it also has peculiar sound and light issues and a very hard floor, all of which affect us in different ways. So I expect we'll stumble into some challenges during rehearsals.

Still, it's been fun to be on the performance circuit. I haven't done much of it since the days I was playing fiddle with Doughty Hill, and I do enjoy the excitement of hanging out with a troupe in one odd situation after another and figuring out how to get the night's job done. Constructing a performance is so different from standing in front of an audience in an open room. And practicing for a music gig is nothing like playing three sets in a crowded bar . . .

. . . and in between sets stepping outside into a winter night, coatless because you're so sweaty from playing so hard. The relief of that sharp air. The camaraderie of the smokers who surround you. You're a stranger but you just played a fiddle lead on "Wagon Wheel" so they love you. Another hour to go. You take deep breaths of cold smoky star-speckled night. Your bare arms prickle. 

Temperatures have dropped into the mid-20s this morning--our coldest day of the season, so far--but a fire crackles in the stove, and the house is snug.

Today is our younger son Paul's 29th birthday . . . so hard to believe we've known and loved him for almost three decades, so hard to imagine our world without him. I went into labor with Paul during an ice storm, and his birthday always seems to mark a turn in the weather. "Deer season starts this weekend," my friends up north remind me. Time to dig out the orange hats. Time to change the clocks. Time to watch the snow fly.

Yesterday I baked a couple of loaves of rye bread and a pumpkin-buttermilk pudding. I cleaned bathrooms and caught up with grocery shopping. I went to the Y, and went for a walk, and talked with my performer friends, but mostly I spent the day alone, which was good. This evening the flurry starts up again--tech rehearsal until 10 p.m., then run-throughs tomorrow afternoon and our performance tomorrow night. So I'll spend the day finishing up the weekly housework, prepping for next week's Monson class, walking, maybe raking leaves, trying to snag a bit of rest before the attack of tech.

Hey, I'm home again!

T and I did stall a bit, spending the morning at the Harriman Point Preserve, a gorgeous, very quiet spit of woods and beach reaching out into Blue Hill Bay. On our walk we watched at least a dozen (and maybe many more) harbor seals cavort in the cove, by far the largest number I've ever seen in one place. So that was a gift and a delight.

Eventually we did make our way back to Portland, where I set myself up for a late-afternoon zoom meeting to talk with arts commission and MWPA contacts about how to design sponsored laureate projects, how to prepare for grant applications, etc. All such advice is hugely helpful to me as I know nothing about how to design and administer these kinds of big endeavors. I can teach or facilitate all day long, but the minutiae of funding is always a mystery. Now, at least, I've got some step-1 instructions, and when things calm down for me in November, I can get started on that.

I think I'll go out to my strength class at the Y this morning. I need to grocery-shop and do housework and otherwise remind myself how to run a household. I hope to take a walk through the cemetery with Teresa,  and catch up with paperwork, and water my houseplants, and maybe even sit down and read a book.

I'm so glad to be sitting by this wood fire right now. 

Here are a few shots I took yesterday of our environs. That's our cabin there at the top, a charming little architect-designed plaything--cute, clean, warm, comfortable; a sweet perk amid all of this busyness.

I write to you from my chair beside the gas fire. Outside a barred owl hoots; inside my roommates slumber  on, though I imagine they'll be awake shortly as we all need to hustle back to daily life this morning.

Yesterday's performance was fun, nerve-wracking, exhausting, exhilarating, just as you might imagine. We had a good-sized crowd, and apparently the upcoming show in Portland is sold out, so it seems that people want to see this thing, which is bewildering and gratifying in equal measure. I can't quite get used to the idea that I'm constructing in this sort of context. Though I've performed publicly for most of my life, I've never made such a piece before, or worked in this way with a group of other people. So I haven't really known what to expect. What we received yesterday was concentration and curiosity, and who could ask for more?

Hello from the little cabin. We haven't been here in daylight, so I don't have any photos for you, other than one I took yesterday afternoon from the dock in Blue Hill. Four of us are tucked up in this little house, and Tom and I get to sleep in bunkbeds like the kids. The other two of us are up the driveway in a one-room cottage. It's all very cute and sweet, and we feel lucky to have been offered such nice housing.

For the moment I'm the only one away (as usual), and I'm perched here with a cup of coffee on a hassock beside the gas fire, almost replicating my usual morning routine. The sun is just rising and I can see a strip of coral sky through the trees and a glimmer of salt water below.

Later this morning the performers will head out for rehearsal, T will wander off to take pictures, and the afternoon show will happen, whether we're ready or not. I expect we'll have an audience: a lot of people came to yesterday's poetry readings. These midcoast festivals are very popular: Belfast was busy too, last week. It's nice to know so many people are curious about words.

I'm feeling well rested this morning, after a quiet night. I got home after five, started the laundry, made a simple dinner--fingerlings roasted with andouille sausage, peppers, and onions; buttery spinach; a beet and lettuce salad. We played cards, listened to a bit of the baseball game, fell asleep early. It was exactly the evening I needed before today's push.

Later this morning our caravan will drive up (over? out? down? coastal directions are strange) to Blue Hill. I'm reading at Blue Hill Books at 2:30, and then we're off the clock till tomorrow's rehearsal. We'll figure out where our cabins are, figure out where to eat dinner, maybe go for a walk . . . who knows?

First, though, I need to figure out what I'll be reading, what to wear, what food to pack, what Chuckie will need while we're gone . . . Yesterday he managed to sneak into the coat closet and got himself shut in there for the entire day. Tom found him eight hours later looking sleepy but unfazed. No mess, no suffering, but still we'd rather not have that happen again. It's a problem with black cats: they're so easily invisible.

Yesterday was a long day . . . visiting with my houseguest, then rehearsing all day, then going out to write in the evening . . . I was glad to be doing it all, but golly.

Today will be another long day in rehearsal, but I'm hoping to at least have a quiet evening, and maybe lay on eyes on Tom for a few hours. I'm glad he'll be coming to Blue Hill with us tomorrow. Another weekend without him would have been hard.

I think we're going to get a crowd at both performances. The Blue Hill show is free so there's no head count, but the Portland show is ticketed, and last I heard we were getting close to being sold out. That's both a comfortable and nerve-wracking feeling.

Today is the day we have to get ourselves into final shape. This afternoon we'll perform for Bowdoin dance faculty and students, so the morning will be a stressful few hours of finalizing visual and sound cues and polishing dances. It's such an odd sort of show: not a play, not a poetry reading, not storytelling, not a professional dance performance but an amalgam of research, imagination, movement, along with music and projected artwork.

Come see us if you're so inclined. We'll be at the Word Literary Festival on Sunday, October 25, 4 p.m., at Emlen Hall at the Bay School. And we'll be at Mechanics' Hall on Congress Street in downtown Portland on Thursday, October 29, 7 p.m.

Yesterday, when I pulled into the driveway, I saw that Tom had finished putting up the sheathing around the front door while I was gone. Next steps: storm-door installation and reattaching the siding, and then the house will be respectable again, except for the still-missing front stoop. I rushed around a bit, tidying up a few things, and then our old friend from Harmony appeared and we had a fun evening going into town for a meal and hanging around by the fire as Chuck beamed and pirouetted. And then I crashed into bed.

Now this morning T will leave for work, Sue will drive to her conference, and I will join my collaboration team and head to Bowdoin for day 1 at the dance studio. Let's hope my introvert button doesn't start flashing red again because if so I'll have to rip the wires out.

Today we'll be resurrecting our piece, which we haven't performed since July. Tomorrow afternoon we'll be opening our rehearsal to Bowdoin's dance faculty and students, so there's no time to waste. Meanwhile, I've been leaping from poetry festival to teaching high schoolers to hosting a houseguest to performing, so I feel like some cross between a jack-in-a-box and a tennis racket.

I fell asleep too early so I woke up too early, but sleep is sleep, I guess, even if the hours are weird. At about 3 a.m. the log trucks started roaring through, as they always do, and my bedroom fronts the main road, so rest was fitful after that. Still, the bed was comfortable, and I managed to linger dozily for a couple of hours until I finally had to admit that I was awake.

I suppose I should have tried to stay up longer last night, and I had every opportunity to do so as there was a big artists' dinner and hangout that was full of friendly, chatty people. But by 7:30 my introvert overload button started flashing red--time to leave, time to leave, time to leave. I haven't had much private time over the past several days, and I've got at least 10 days of public flurry ahead of me. My brain-body alert system clearly decided to take charge.

So here I am, restoratively alone, feet up on an apartment couch, wrapped in my familiar bathrobe, waiting for coffee to wind its way through the filter. Today the kids will be working with members of the Illustration Institute on an all-day project, so my teaching duties will be pretty light. Still, I'll need to be sociable, and that, apparently, is what my brain-body alert system was trying to reset yesterday evening. Let's hope it did.

The Illustration Institute residency is a good chance for our young visual artists and writers to come together to create work, so everyone on staff is pleased. I'm sure it will be an excellent day, as long as I can don this newly mended anti-hermit cloak. It'll need to stay intact for quite a while, what with visitors and rehearsals and travel and performances and and and.

Funny how a body just makes a decision sometimes. Quit. Enough. Go. 

 

It's 36 degrees outside, and a fire is catching in the wood stove. Chuckie is filled with breakfast, Tom is in bed nursing a cup of coffee, and I am deliberately celebrating these few minutes in front of the fire before I have to hoick myself forward into another travel day. This morning's docket: off to the Y for a class, and then home to make up the guest bed and tidy the back room so that it's ready for tomorrow evening, when one of my dear Harmony friends swoops briefly into town.

This month is crammed with event, but at least I've been able to make good use of the off days to resettle myself. Yesterday I did the housework and shopping and in the afternoon even made some progress on garden cleanup: tearing out frosted plants and, most importantly, digging up dahlia tubers for winter storage. Our yard is currently a construction site, stacked with materials and detritus, so clearing out the garden isn't helping anything aesthetically. Still, focusing on home stuff settles my mind. Somehow charging back out onto the road is easier when I know that the floors are mopped, the dahlias are safe for the winter, the woodboxes and kindling baskets are full and waiting.

I haven't forgotten the Sappho project, but it's had to take a backseat for a few days. I'm not exactly out of the zone, but I am out of time to be in the zone. During some quiet moments in Belfast I did add a couple of new drafts, but neither is finished yet. I'm beginning to feel that the poems are arcing toward an ending, though I don't know what that ending will be yet. Maybe I'll work on the project in Monson tonight, or maybe I won't. Usually I don't write well in the evenings. As this choppily written paragraph makes clear, I don't know what my brain will demand of me, or when. And there's no rush. The story simmers.

Home again, briefly, which means that today has to be rushing-around-with-chores day: weekly housework, groceries, catching up with emails; and if there's any time left over from all of that, I'll start tearing frosted plants out of the garden. Tomorrow I'll head north for an overnight in Monson, so I need to make the most of this drop-in visit to my own domain. I would love to also do a little bit of nothing much. It's hard to figure out how, though.

The Belfast jaunt went well: a packed reading on Saturday night and a full workshop the next morning. Apparently lots of people come to this festival from faraway places; I had poets from NYC and even Toronto in my workshop. I imagine that the midcoast's summer-house culture partly accounts for that, but still it seemed notable.

Meanwhile, Tom worked on his house project all weekend, and at the same time a huge roofing crew was replacing the neighbors' three roofs, so our corner of the world was saws and hammering and ropes and shouts and the roofers' kids playing with rakes in the grass and eating doughnuts in the back of the truck.

Now our front door sports fresh exterior trim and new wiring for lights and doorbell, and there's non-water-damaged plywood sheathing surrounding it, and before long we might even have siding and a storm door, and someday even a stoop. All hail the handyman.

A quick good morning from Belfast, Maine, because I don't have wifi here and I don't want to use too much phone data. But here are some Coast Guard boats and blue skies for you to enjoy until we meet again.

Coffee and a crackling fire and even a small sleep-in until Chuckie got fed up with that: it's nice to have a slow Saturday morning before the weekend busyness barges in.

This morning I've got various things to do, not least figuring out what poems to read tonight. And after lunch I'll drive up to the coast to the Belfast Poetry Festival, where I'll be appearing as the keynote poet (6:30 p.m. at the UU church) and then leading a generative workshop tomorrow morning (10 a.m. at the Rockweed Center). There may or may not be spaces left in the workshop; I'm not sure, but check that out if you're in the area and in the mood.

Yesterday turned out to be unexpectedly busy. The strength and balance class at the Y was good, and felt very useful, so now I need to figure out if I can afford to take it regularly. Then dance rehearsal was a reminder of rhythm and body attention. I spent hours away from words, after a week of word frenzy, and I think that may have been a good thing. I was still thinking about my poems; I talked about them with Gretchen; I wondered what they were and would become. But a little separation was tonic.

This morning I feel energetic and well rested, reasonably ready to cross the line from introverted obsessor to public poet. I'm still learning this new way of work, but I'm sort of getting there. I hope.

This morning I'll be up and out early--first, going over to the Y with some friends to try a strength and balance class, then driving up to Bowdoin to start rehearsing for the upcoming Monson, Maine, USA performances. Teresa won't fly in until the middle of next week, but the rest of us are going to try to get a head start on resurrecting the dances.

So it will be a busy-in-sweatpants kind of day and also a chance to wean myself from the Sappho project before I head up the coast for the poetry festival tomorrow. I've been lucky to have so many hours this week to devote to writing poems, but any further progress will have to leak in around the edges of obligation.

At last night's writing group I wrote a draft completely unrelated to the Sappho poems that nonetheless felt like it had potential. Apparently whatever is smoldering in my brain isn't limited to the one obsession but is branching into other themes and details as well. Maybe it will also filter through all of these upcoming performances and readings and workshops. It is nice to imagine that writing fluidly might lead to dancing fluidly, but I have my doubts.

Last night Tom stripped off the painters' tape and installed the door knob and the lock, a task that looks like it should take five minutes but actually takes much longer and requires considerable sighing and finagling. So (from inside the house) the door is now lovely, though in need of a good window washing. I look forward to today's sunshine.

So far it's a cool morning here in the little northern city by the sea, with temperatures forecast to hover in the 50s. A fire crackles in the stove. Chuckie blinks contentedly. The Dodgers are in danger of being swept by the Brewers. All in all, a good start to the day.

I've reached 32 pages in my Sappho project. I don't know where this story is coming from, but then I never know much when I'm in the midst. Writing hard makes me feel like the dumbest, happiest, most pig-headed person on the planet.

Today, hanging sheets on the line in the sun and wind. Baking a Turkish yogurt cake for my evening poetry' group. Maybe a noontime visit with a friend. A walk in the cemetery. And writing, and writing, and writing.

I promised you a sad photo, and here she is, poor little Alcott House, patched and scarred. Believe me, she looks a lot better than she did on Saturday afternoon, when she was a gaping maw. The new door kept out yesterday's wind and rain; and with floors mopped, windows washed, and wood stove alight, Chuck and I were snug.

After cleaning up construction dirt, I spent yesterday prepping for this weekend's workshop in Belfast, then running out midday to get my hair cut before capitulating again to the siren song of my Sappho project. Leek and potato soup for dinner, with anadama toast, a tomato and broccoli salad, and orange cake with blueberry sauce. Tom blessedly taking a night off and doing nothing much more than doze on the couch. Rain pattering in the darkness.

Meanwhile, the poems uncoil a universe.

Finally, at 8 p.m. last night, Tom settled the new door into place--and just in time, as it's supposed to rain all day. Much work remains to be done (maybe for tomorrow's post I'll take a photo for you of the outside of the house, which still looks grim), but at least the indoor side is more or less finished, except for new trim, which will be the last stage of this complicated repair project. Yesterday evening neighbors kept stopping by to sympathetically tsk. The hideous vision has been hard to overlook. The hole in the house was stupendously ugly, and, yes, much of the structure seems to have been held together by expanding foam rather than solid wood. It did kind of look like the entrance to hell.

But back to the new door. That's the old door you see sitting next to it, a windowless block. So with these three new pebbled panes, the atmosphere of our living room has changed dramatically. I'm eager to see how the additional sunlight will affect, among other things, my houseplants. 

Today, I've got to do yet another round of housecleaning, but so it goes with construction projects . . . vacuuming, mopping, wiping down the new windows. Amid yesterday's cleanup, I managed to finish an editing task while still keeping my nose to the grindstone with the Sappho poems. I hauled cans to the returnable center and dropped off my absentee ballot and pondered the variable outcomes of romance in Greek myths.

This weekend I'll be away at the Belfast Poetry Festival; then, starting next week, Monson, a houseguest, rehearsals at Bowdoin, performing at the Word Festival in Blue Hill, more rehearsals, performing at Mechanics' Hall in Portland . . . These few days I've spent cleaning up after construction and trying to do what I can to take care of exhausted Tom have been comparatively restful, and though Sappho has chosen to interfere, her timing has been good.

Twenty-nine pages of poems so far. What is going on here?

We're still doorless, though Tom worked all day till dusk, hoping he'd be able to install it. I'm not surprised the job's taking so long: he's been replacing not only the rotted sill but also sections of rotted beams and joists. At one point he was jacking up the house. So many secrets lie beneath the skin of a building, all of them eager to disintegrate when you're not paying attention.

Unfortunately he doesn't have today off from work, so I'm not sure when he'll return to the task. Maybe in the evenings, he says, if he can come home a little early. Or maybe we'll be in limbo till next weekend. 

Meanwhile, the rains have moved in. Knowing they were imminent, I, too, tried to catch up on a few outside chores, among them repotting a couple of root-bound houseplants. But I was still distracted by the Sappho project. Though I wrote only two more poems, I spent quite a while poring over the rest of the manuscript, not with a revisionary eye, simply trying to attend to my burgeoning characters and situations. I don't know how to write a novel, but surely, as with poems, it must be important not to excise material too soon. Whatever-this-is-I'm-writing is some sort of poem-story mashup, and I don't want to slice up the fabric before I even know what it looks like.

Since Friday I have written nine new poems for my Sappho project (and started a tenth). Of course this overflow is thrilling me: I am always all-of-a-shiver when I'm in the zone. All day long yesterday, between planting garlic and tulips and lugging plywood for Tom, between hanging up laundry and taking it down again, between stripping the last peppers and tomatoes from the plants and simmering and straining green salsa for the freezer, I was crouched over my laptop, writing, writing, writing.

The draft is now 25 pages long . . . I can hardly believe how fast this story is pouring out of me. I don't know where it will end up, but something big is happening. I love my characters and their time and place, and my schtick of having to account for every single word of the Sappho fragment in every single poem has turned out to be compositional gold.

Now, on this chilly Sunday morning, I sit alone in my darkened living room, watching flames lick at the kindling in the stove. Various deconstruction issues, mostly involving rot, slowed Tom down yesterday, so instead of a new door, a sheet of plywood is plugging the hole. Today, he assures me, the door will be installed . . . not that I'm nagging. I know all about the unavoidable delays of repair.

Without a real door, this room is drafty, and I'm not too willing to turn on the furnace so that it can blast expensive hot air into the front yard. So thank goodness for this doughty wood stove, and for this hot cup of coffee, and for this thick red bathrobe. And for the warmth of my nine new poems.

When I'm in the zone, I'm mostly dazed. I feel dumber than usual. The words arrive fast; I can barely keep up with them, but I'm not exactly thinking. Almost, my attention is shunted to one side. I see what's happening but I'm not quite part of what's happening. I suppose there's a dream analogy to be made, except that I'm not enmeshed in illogic. This is imagination at ferocious work, I guess. Story snatches the reins, and fingers humbly perform their secretarial role.

I have no idea how long this aura will last. Maybe the burst is over for the moment, or maybe I'll write nine more poems today. Whatever happens, I was lucky; I was showered with jewels . . . which isn't to say that what I made is precious. The glitter was the act of making.

It's 42 degrees outside on this Saturday morning, and a new fire crackles in the wood stove. Our furnace problem has been fixed, but why waste oil when my basement is crammed with construction scraps? Tom has lugged home so much pine-board slag from work that I've barely needed to touch the actual firewood yet. Though pine is not ideal for real winter cold, at this time of year it's just right for taking the edge off the chill.

And the house will be open to the elements today because T will be ripping out the front door frame. If all goes well, by the end of the day we will have a brand-new, freshly painted, not-ugly weathertight door and storm door in place, with a solid sill beneath them. Of course this does mean that the Big Kitten will have to spend a few hours locked in the basement so he can't escape through the gaping maw, but I think he'll survive, though he will have his doubts.

Yesterday I went back to a writing project I think I mentioned to you a while ago--a linked story-in-poems, with each poem containing every word from one particular Sappho fragment. I wrote four new pieces and then went back through the draft as a whole to tweak language and story elements. The poems are set in the wartime 1940s, in an unnamed, semi-mythical, American provincial city. And because they are constrained by Sappho's word choice, the characters, too, are semi-mythical: a pair of working-class adult sisters caring for, and being controlled by, difficult parents who are enmeshed in the machinations of the Greek pantheon.

This has been very enjoyable project, not least because I've been able to come and go with it--work on it for a few days, let it lie for a few weeks--without losing the narrative or emotional threads . . . which isn't to say that I know where the tale is going. The story unrolls like a ball of yarn, and I am following the string. It's 17 pages long so far, almost chapbook length, and maybe that's what it will end up becoming. Or maybe it will be even longer. I'll let the story figure that out for itself.

Otherwise: today I'll plant garlic and tulip bulbs, start tearing out garden detritus, hang sheets on the outside lines. This will be my last weekend at home for a while, so I'll try to make the most of it.

Yesterday's jaunt to Bates turned out to be so pleasant. I spent an hour or so with a first-year class, whose assignment was to bring questions to class to ask me. Clearly, as good students, they tried to choose questions that would make their teacher happy. They were, on the whole, quite reminiscent of the kids I spent time with last month in Jersey City: career overachievers who had honed their ability to ace school. I recognize them: I went to Haverford, which is the same sort of college as Bates . . . though I personally had some serious gaps in my ability to ace school.

But at one moment yesterday, a change rippled the atmosphere. I'd been talking about a poem of mine that the class had been assigned to read: "Play Clothes," from Calendar. And I said casually, "I bet you all have a piece of clothing you remember loving to wear when you were young." Slowly, one student after another began piping up: the Sponge Bob shirt, the shirt with pink ladybugs . . . and then what they'd been doing while wearing these clothes . . . hugging a chinchilla, shooting their brother with a water pistol . . . It was poetry in action, that moment: these students suddenly saw that the detritus of life, our physical memory, holds intense emotion . . . saw that leading with things rather than abstractions is a way to tap into the depths.

It was a beautiful slippage.

Just a quick note this morning as I am heading out very early for my Bates College class. But for a moment I am paused here on the couch, listening to vague rain pattering against the dark windows. I hear Chuckie lapping up his breakfast; I hear the halting drip of the bathroom shower head and the cooling teakettle clicking on the kitchen stove. So many small sounds overlapping--a sort of aural fidget, a peaceable friction. And upstairs Tom sighing in his bed.

Today is my birthday, and I am celebrating with a cup of coffee and a daybreak fire in the wood stove. Outside it's 38 degrees, our coldest morning since last spring, and our new furnace is on the blink (sigh: probably a sensor issue but it should be under warranty and the guy is coming to repair it tomorrow), so starting a fire is simple common sense. Still, even in the woods, our stove always felt like such rich luxury. Yes, it was hard work to keep it stoked. Yes, it demanded constant attention. But sitting in a dark room watching golden flames lick at the maple logs, the soothing crackle and pop of pine kindling, stretching my hands out to the sweet warmth . . . that routine never gets stale.

So I'm 62 years old today--waking up in this little shabby house, in this little city by the sea, on this cold October morning. The day is mine, except for an evening zoom reading. My plan is to get onto my exercise mat, which I haven't done all summer; to go for a walk and return a library book; to deal with laundry and emails; and then read and write for the rest of the day. Nothing spectacular: just a bumble around alone in my own dear space.

Yesterday after work, I walked into find a sweet homemade card from Tom and Chuckie. Then, when T got home from work, he took me out to a a tiny Japanese restaurant where we sat at the bar and ate one exquisite mouthful of seafood after another. Tonight I'll make my own dinner, but that's pleasure too.

Every year my birthday reminds me of how much I love this world, despite all. The clean blue of an October sky. Wind gusting through dry leaves. The hop-skip of a silly black cat. The smile of friends who are glad to see me. Tom's knee pressed against mine. It's all so simple. It's all so tangled. I'm so glad to be here.

When I arrived in the homeland yesterday afternoon, a chill wind was whipping through the trees, spinning bright leaves into gusts and eddies. All night long it roared. I woke and slept and woke and slept, soothed by its oceanic growl. Living in the woods is living among the noise of trees, and for more than two decades this creak and swirl was my soundscape. Even today nothing comforts my ear like wind in a forest.

In a few minutes I'll get up, get dressed, get coffee and toast. I'll lug my overnight stuff out into the new morning and head north to Monson and a day's work. Today will be my first full day with this year's high school cohort, and our focus will be language. What are these words? Where do they bring us? How can we follow them?

 

Sunday continued our all-consuming house-centered weekend. While Tom was hammering off the final vestiges of the brick stoop and scraping out the rotten sill under the door, I was mowing grass and picking cherry tomatoes and hanging clothes on the line and kneading anadama bread and slicing fruit for a pear and cranberry pie. Now the house is sporting the ugly plywood band-aid it will wear till next weekend, and the pantry is stocked with food for packed lunches, and we are both pulling ourselves together for our long work weeks.

This afternoon I'll head north to the homeland and spend the night in Wellington, then teach in Monson tomorrow and tumble back to Portland afterward so that T can escort me out for a birthday celebration a day early. Dinner isn't possible on my actual birthday because I'm taking part in a zoom reading that evening--a one-year celebration of Baron's passing. (I'm unclear if this reading is open to an audience; if it is, I'll share the link soon.) Then, at the crack of dawn on Thursday, I'll drive to Lewiston to visit a class at Bates, and probably I'll be doing something on Friday too; I just can't recall what.

The flurry of October has begun, but this morning I'm feeling energetic and focused, which is a good sign, I think. Plenty of sleep, plenty of physical activity, time with home things, visits with friends, and a poem draft on the burner: all of this is good medicine.

Well, the front stoop is gone, but what a job. Tom spent the entire day beating at bricks and concrete with hammers and pry bars. It was a beast of a chore, and now the driveway is stacked with rubble and the rotted sill glares out in full hideous evidence.

There wasn't much I could do to help, other than make lunch, tote rubble, and offer good cheer. So I caught up with herb processing: getting dried ones into jars, getting fresh ones into the freezer. I picked a final batch of Serrano peppers and strung them up to dry. I cleaned and prepped another batch of wild mushrooms. The freezer is pretty much at capacity now: I really ought to stop looking for mushrooms, but it's so hard to ignore the riches when I spot them.

Tomorrow afternoon I'll be heading north for an overnight before my Tuesday high school class. So today I'll deal with groceries and get a start on the weekly housework, though there's no point in trying to clean floors during an active construction project. I want to bake a pear and cranberry pie. I want to work on a poem draft. I want to help Tom in whatever way I can, though mostly I can't do anything except be friendly.

Still, when it comes to construction projects, good cheer and friendliness aren't nothing. The default is complain about the mess, complain about the noise, complain about boot dirt, not to mention complain about the cost. Carpenters take a lot of shit on the job. Meanwhile, what I am is thrilled that we're getting a new solid home improvement. Also, I really like this guy. I'll make a hot lunch for him anytime he wants one.

Our odd burst of summer has receded. This morning is chilly, and temperatures aren't forecast to get out of the low 60s. Good weather for working outside, which is exactly what Tom and I will be doing today. This morning he'll drive to the lumberyard pick up the new front door he ordered. And then he'll start tearing apart our front stoop, with me as his clumsy assistant. This will involve more than simply yanking apart old boards because the house's previous "handyman" made the idiot decision to cram a set of badly constructed plank stairs over a patched and crumbling set of brick ones. So T has two busted-up stoops to remove, and the condition of the brick one is as yet unknown. Will the bricks easily loosen and be salvageable? Or will he be beating at chunks of concrete with a big hammer? Stay tuned for the next thrilling installment of Stoop Wars.

Given these demolition issues, there's little chance of actually getting the new door installed this weekend, though T might find time to paint it. Still, I'm looking forward to the bustle. I love home repairs, despite the mess. Tom is such an extremely good carpenter: he is a pleasure to watch at work. And because he rarely has time to put his skills to use on our own place, every little project is very exciting. Our current front-door situation is terrible. The casing is warped and crooked and rotten. The storm door leaks rain. And the door itself is ugly and windowless. I can't wait for a fine tight new door that lets in daylight, not to mention having a stoop with evenly spaced steps and a functional railing. What luxury.

It's 65 degrees this morning, so strangely summery after a few evenings of wood fires and couch blankets. Out to dinner last night with a friend, we sat at a sidewalk table in the gloaming, marveling at the soft air. And now crickets are singing in the darkness and Chuckie perches happily beside the open screen door and I wonder if I might go back to wearing the sandals I thought I had put away for the season.

Yesterday I beetled among class plans and workshops plans, and then suddenly, after lunch, I had had enough. No more. My brain was done. I did a few house chores, I read my book, but desk work could take a hike. So it will be interesting to see what my brain decides to allow today. To be fair, it's gotten me quite far this week: all of that editing swept away, all of those classes prepped. Maybe it will soften and allow me to mess around with a few poems or my chapbook. Or maybe it will march me outside to work in the garden. Or maybe it will require me to drive to Mall Land and buy some sheets without holes in them. I await my orders.

I'm happy to report that yesterday I shoved the last of those three editing projects off my to-do list. I know another big job will show up shortly in my inbox, but that one will be far less time-sensitive: I can spoon it in around the edges of everything else, and there will be a lot of everything else in October. Two Monson, Maine, USA performances, long days of rehearsal at Bowdoin, the Belfast Poetry Festival, the Word Literary Festival, my Monson classes, a morning with Bates students . . . It's a packed month, and I feel squinty and overwhelmed just thinking about it.

But at least I am gradually getting my planning under control. The other big thing I accomplished yesterday was to finish the syllabus for the November Poetry Kitchen class on Grimms' fairy tales. So that is out of my hair, and today I can turn my thoughts to prepping for Tuesday's Monson session and pulling together the workshop I'll be leading in Belfast.

On top of everything else, I'm turning 62 next Wednesday, which also happens to be the first anniversary of Baron's death. I've always been emotional about my birthdays, those formal markers of waning time.  I love life, and I'm never gloomy about adding another year to my ticket. But loss does thicken, and autumn is always elegiac. It can't help itself. And so there's a poignancy to my looming birthday . . . a celebration and a sigh.

One more small editing project to finish today, and then I am out from under, at least for the moment. There are so many other tasks wailing at me and tugging at my skirt. I need to get ready for next week's Monson class, I need to finish prepping for my November Poetry Kitchen class, I need to return to planning the chapbook I'll be doing with the printer David Wolfe, I need to start reading the Berryman collection, I need to actually write poems again . . . 

But at least that giant editing project is off my desk. And I did get the housework done, and I did catch up on thinking-ahead grocery shopping so that the freezer is now stocked with protein basics that I can plan around as I'm coming and going. We don't have a big deep-freeze, just the small box freezer over the refrigerator. So my stock-up-ahead space is limited, and it's already bulging with tomato sauce, peaches, blueberries, chicken broth, sweet peppers, wild mushrooms, corn, chard, basil, parsley . . . But all of that will disappear quickly, once the garden shuts down for the season.

It's funny: for some people I know, the homestead urge--to save, store, squirrel away--doesn't intersect with any interest in actually cooking. Despite a freezer stuffed with produce, they're still mostly opening canned soup for dinner. The freezer boxes sit in perpetuity, with next summer's produce tossed on top of them. This is an odd disconnect, a weird version of hoarding, maybe. I've seen the same thing happen with firewood: the restless fear of running out of wood, so that every tiny branch is cut and stacked in every corner of the yard, where they slowly rot away under snow and time.

So often, the desire to save overshadows the desire to use. When we bought our house in Harmony, we found box after box stuffed into the crawl space over the shop, all filled with neatly cut strips of foam-based acoustic tiles of the sort that were popular in ugly schools in the 1970s--each strip maybe 10 inches long and 2 inches wide . . . completely useless for anything, but how long did it take to cut those scraps to size, to neatly fill those boxes, to lug them up a ladder and stack them tidily for "the future"?

It's still raining, lightly, lightly. What a gorgeous storm this has been--so long and slow. The grass has greened again, the plants have relaxed . . . and yesterday morning on my walk I found exactly what I had hoped to find: a huge gift of maitake mushrooms nestled among the roots of an oak tree.

Those are dishpans you're looking at, each one loaded with dripping-wet mushrooms--probably ten or fifteen pounds. And needless to say, with this many mushrooms to process, my plans for the day changed suddenly. I did finish the editing project, but I pushed all of the housework aside because dealing with this amount of treasure requires hours of slow washing, trimming, and then cooking. In the end four quarts went into the freezer, I roasted a bowlful for dinner, and we are in mushroom Eden around here. Maitakes are, as they say in the biz, choice. 

Yesterday a couple of my poems appeared in the new issue of the Maine Arts Journal, along with an introduction by my dear Betsy Sholl. Anything Betsy writes about my work makes me cry; her affection and approbation are among the sweetest things I know. As an apprentice poet in the woods I admired her so much from afar. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that we really are friends now.

Today I'll catch up on the housework I shoved to the side yesterday and then turn my thoughts to finishing a second editing assignment. I ought to make appointments for Covid and flu shots, and I certainly should take a trip to the fish market to restock the freezer. Now that I'm on school time again, I need to reconfigure my meal planning accordingly. No more idle forays: when I come home late, the materials for dinner must be waiting for me.

But of course there's always the possibility I might find another giant cache of mushrooms on my walk . . .

It's been raining for close to 24 hours now and will likely continue for most of another 24. It's been a long time since we've had this much rain, and it's been perfect: no gale-force downpours and the rain falling slow enough so that the ground has a chance to absorb it.

I kept a little fire going all day yesterday, just for the pleasure of idling beside it. I did accomplish a few useful things, but mostly I nursed my cold, and this morning I do feel like I'm on the mend. It was never a very large cold, just a small first-day-of-school reminder, but still it left me slow-bodied and slow-witted. A rainy Sunday at home was a convalescent's dream.

This morning I'll be back to work: first, a walk and mushroom hunt in the rain; then weekly housework, a zoom meeting, and with luck I'll also manage to finish my editing project. Pan-roasted spicy chicken is on the docket for dinner, alongside fresh salsa and guacamole and buttered Swiss chard. I need to run a couple of errands. I'd like to work on a poem but likely won't have time. I'm finishing up Niall Williams's This Is Happiness and then I'll start on John Berryman's Dream Songs (my next reading project with Teresa) and Ruth Moore's A Walk down Main Street, about high school basketball in 1950s-era Maine.

***

One thing I did accomplish on my convalescent day was to send out the first fundraising letter for the Baron Wormser Scholarship for Teachers. Baron died last October--on my birthday--so now seemed like a good time to announce this initiative and to think again about how much he gave to the world. Here's the letter I sent out. If you can donate to the fund, I would be so grateful--

Announcing the Baron Wormser Scholarship for Teachers

Last October we lost our friend and mentor Baron Wormser to brain cancer. As the first anniversary of that loss approaches, I have been thinking again about the hole his absence has left. So many of us were changed by his writings, his teaching, his comradeship. He built a space for many people who might not otherwise have known we belonged to the poetry world. He helped us to find one another, and to find ourselves.

Perhaps Baron’s greatest public service was his devotion to teachers and to young people. When he founded the Conference on Poetry and Teaching at the Frost Place more than two decades ago, he threw out a lifeline to teachers who had been struggling to balance their own creative longings with their responsibility to their students as well as with the burdens of institutional requirements and increasing political pressure. The conference quickly attracted participants from around the United States and beyond. Though it began by focusing on K–12 educators, it was soon welcoming community college and university professors, MFA candidates, teaching artists, people working in social service and government positions, even poets with no institutional affiliation who were simply drawn to the collegial, democratic nature of the conference.

After Baron retired as director of the conference in 2012, I was honored to shoulder the work he’d begun. Now, after nearly a quarter-century at the Frost Place, it is thriving today as the Conference on Poetry and Learning, held each July at Monson Arts in central Maine.

In honor of Baron, I am announcing the establishment of the Baron Wormser Scholarship for Teachers, a full scholarship to the conference that will be awarded annually to a K–12 inservice teacher who could not otherwise afford to attend.

If you would like to honor Baron with a donation to this scholarship fund, I would be immensely grateful. Simply follow this link and scroll through the donation options until you find “Conference on Poetry and Learning (Baron Wormser Donation).”

Your support of the conference helps us continue the work that Baron began. He believed that poetry opened a window into the best of humanity. Our teachers and our young people are the future we must cherish.

In this half-lit hour, wet sidewalks glisten, and a steady breeze spins and rattles among the leaves. There's no rain falling at the moment, though the air is spongy with moisture. 

A Carolina wren bursts into voice. Teary, teary, teary. Teary, teary, teary . . . She repeats, repeats, repeats, then suddenly falls silent. A gust flutters the screen door.

Upstairs Chuck chirps at Tom, and Tom replies, Oh? In the strengthening daylight I note that the neighbors' driveway is pasted with soppy leaves, and now a next round of drizzle begin to tap at the panes.

Here's hoping for storm all day, pot of minestrone on the stove, cup of tea in hand, reading books by the fire, occasional check-ins on the Sox and the Bills games, nothing much, nothing important, a wet Sunday at home, Chuckie scrabbling noisily among the dining-room chair legs, a loaf of bread on the rise.

Saturday morning. Darkness still curls over the little northern city by the sea, and roofs, chimneys, maples are sharp-edged silhouettes against the sky's blue ink. So far, no rain or wind has made landfall, but surely the bay is thickening, whipping itself into foam and thunder, and the humid air is heavy with portent. 

I lit the wood stove yesterday, for the first time this season, and listened to the Sox beat the Cubs, and mashed potatoes and roasted broccoli, and turned on the lamps, and the soft weight of autumn evening settled onto house, garden, sidewalk, street.

Now Chuckie crunches his chow, and Tom sighs in his sleep. Day slowly pulls up the shades, and inky sky fades to pale cloud.

In a little while I'll go for my walk, I'll deal with laundry, I'll find something to wear, I'll gather together books, I'll climb into the car, I'll drive off to the north, I'll read poems. Meanwhile, the ocean will churn and gulls will flatten and veer in the wind.

There is nothing like a storm to make one's own doings feel small.

I just woke up from a dream in which I was trying to teach in a crowded classroom in Guilford, Maine, but the kids were playing music, joking, talking, completely ignoring me. Some administrator--the principal?--was in the room observing and appeared to be entirely unconcerned about my helpless state. It's a standard version of a teacher anxiety dream, but the timing is odd as I have just taught two different populations of kids (in New Jersey and in Monson) and didn't have trouble with either. Does my brain think I should be more scared than I am?

Yesterday I went for a walk, baked two apples pies, did the grocery shopping, edited a novel, endured a meeting, finished stacking our green firewood, went out to my poetry group, and wrote a funny poem draft that I'm pleased with--altogether a productive day. Today should be quieter. I'll be talking with Teresa this afternoon about Aurora Leigh, but otherwise I'll mostly be at my desk trying to make a dent in the editing project and attempting to remember what it feels like to be home.

The homey feeling will be brief as tomorrow I'll be on the road again, reading at Bailey Memorial Library, 1 p.m., in Winthrop. Terrible weather is forecast for the weekend, but Saturday looks like the less problematic day, so stop by if you're in the Augusta area. I'm thinking I might bring along that crown of sonnets again.

And then I really will be home, and for an entire week too. Such a novelty! My first plan is to thoroughly enjoy the oncoming nor'easter on Sunday . . . light a fire in the wood stove, bake bread and simmer minestrone, deal with herbs (pack up dried sage, thyme, and dill; process more parsley and basil for the freezer), maybe watch the Bills game if it's available on local TV, definitely fall asleep in front of the fire while rain whips at the windows. Doesn't that sound ideal?

We had a great first day of school at Monson Arts. This year's cohort is already eager to write, talk, and share, though most have known each other for only about 5 minutes. I've got two repeats from last session, the younger relative of a previous student, and, for the first time, an alum of the visual arts program who's decide to do the writing program this year. I've also got my first homeschooler, though V/A has had a few over the years. What I'm short of, so far, are boys (only one). But a couple of the schools had conflicts and couldn't send kids for the first day, so that may change.

On the way home Gretchen and I  took a side trip to North Star Orchards in Madison, my very favorite orchard on earth. I was a regular customer there, all the years we were in Harmony. They have extremely effective storage practices, so the fruit is fresh and firm late into the season, and the spot itself is just gorgeous--up on a rise that overlooks the western Maine mountains and down into New Hampshire's Presidentials. And to my great happiness, the owner remembered me clearly, asked after my boys, and altogether reminded me that my life in Harmony was real.

So I came home loaded with nostalgia and Tom's favorite apples (and also pears, a gift from the chef in Monson), which means that today I'll need to squeeze pie baking into the schedule. I have to edit, and I have to grocery-shop, and I have to meet with arts commission folks, and now I have to slice up apples and roll out dough. What I don't need to do is go away overnight any time soon. So much road stuff, so close together. I am very ready to be home. 

 Good morning from the homeland, where the trees are turning red and orange in a dry dusty way, and the lake shimmers in last light before dark, and the loon splashes and  wails. We lit a campfire by the water and sat out late. And then I went to bed and dreamed of my dead cat dying again, and of a crazy bus driver who needed to be overpowered before he crashed the bus, and of someone who kept referring to Marie Antoinette as Margaret Antoinette.

Tomorrow will be my first Monson Arts high school class of the season, which means that this afternoon I'll be heading north for my first overnight-in-the-homeland of the season. It will be fun: I'm driving up with Gretchen, who's going to lead an opening morning with the kids, and we'll spend the night by the lake, with all of its overtones of summer. So there's a bit of a party atmosphere in the air, despite the schoolishness. Also, I have my car back, thank goodness. We fetched T's truck from the garage yesterday afternoon, and now all I need to do is wipe a little sawdust off the Mazda seats and try to remember how the electronics work.

Yesterday was mostly laundry and housework, but I did meet with Teresa and Jeannie in the afternoon to talk about the strange and complicated writing prompt we've been playing with, which (as I think I mentioned last month) involves the visuals of part of an avant-garde music score by the composer Cornelius Caridew. I can't share that visual here because I'm sure it's copyrighted, but I'm hoping that one of these days we can figure out a way to share what we've been doing. Our own pages are also quite visually messy--Teresa in particular is struggling with how to show her work--and now we're also beginning to imagine soundscapes, so who knows what might happen. For now, it's an interesting bog.

This morning I'll go for my walk and then I'll slam out some editing before I start pulling myself together for departure after lunch. I brought the first loads of firewood up from the basement yesterday, so the living room suddenly looks different--smaller, snugger. No lit fires yet, but my match is at the ready. Still, fresh flowers flutter on the mantle; the kitchen counter is full of tomatoes; summer hasn't relinquished her grip. It's an odd season, this transition, this shimmy into the waning year.

***

On another subject entirely: Here's a link to an interview with me in the Third Fig Review, the newsletter of Millay House Rockland. 

We arrived home to a cold house last night. Apparently Maine transformed into full-fledged autumn while we were gone, which means that today I'd better bring up a load of firewood and the fire tools so I can be ready for this new world. As it was, we immediately caved to our unprepared state and turned on the furnace. Modern life has its allures.

I was insomniac in Brooklyn but fortunately collapsed into a dreamless coma as I soon as I returned to my own bed. However, the Monday-morning alarm was quite unwelcome. I could have stayed asleep a lot longer, if Chuckie had allowed it. But the Big Kitten is too thrilled to have us home again to allow us to stay asleep. So blearily I sit here writing to you, and blearily Tom drinks his coffee upstairs. The day demands our obedience.

In good news: Tom's truck is supposed to be ready for pick up today, so I should get my car back in time for the drive to Monson tomorrow. In bad news: We'll be slapped with yet another heart-stopping vehicle repair bill. In regular news: There's a lot of laundry in the basket, a lot of desk work in the coffers. The housework list is long, and the garden is wild. I've got a zoom meeting this afternoon, and I hope I don't fall asleep in the midst of it.

Yesterday was busy and lovely. We began the afternoon at the NYC Transit Museum, which is actually one of my favorite museums of all time. It's located in an unused subway station, and many of the exhibits are touchable and usable--turnstiles, ticket booths, and subway cars spanning the entire history of the network, which one can wander through and sit in. Then, midafternoon, we went to the buffalo stampede, an event I had struggled to imagine but that turned out to be one of the most interesting public art projects I've ever experienced. The giant puppets were amazing: the puppeteers were able to move and shift them in ways that really evoked the bodies of massive herd animals. Even when standing in place, they were always shifting and flickering, as large ruminants do; and the sight of forty of these puppets moving through a major city was poignant and beautiful. We walked the route with them, and with a huge crowd of other people--along the way stopping to listen to gospel singers on the steps of Borough Hall . . . among them Rhiannon Giddens, which was exciting. It was just a great afternoon, one that felt both impulsive and mysterious, and I was so glad to be there.

Temperatures cooled down enough last night for Steve to turn off the A/C, so now through the open bedroom window I listen to a single sparrow chirp, chirp, chirp like a slow metronome. The cicadas still hum, and beyond the animal voices I hear the far-off mutter of expressway traffic, closer roar of a truck, clipped whine and whoop of a cop car.

It was fun to meet Tom in town yesterday. I miss him so when I'm on the road, and it is nice to think that we can gradually work out ways to be together a little more often during my long travel stretches. This evening we'll be doing our parental duties--meeting up with our son's partner's family in Manhattan, going with them to a show--but the rest of our Saturday is open. So we've decided to check out this spectacle: a public art project in which 40 life-sized buffalo puppets stampede through downtown Brooklyn. I have high hopes that this will be strange and wonderful, but maybe it will just be a crowded mess. With a spectacle, one never knows.

It's muggy and dim this morning, and the cicadas in the apartment's handkerchief-sized backyard are operatic. The city is warmer than I thought it would be when I was home in autumnal Maine: summery and sticky, not a hint of chill in the air.

Thus far the visit has been relentlessly social, as I knew it would be. So I'm glad to be able to start off today slowly. I will meet Tom at the bus stop around 12:30, but till then the hours are my own. My plan is to get out of this bed whenever I happen to get out of it: shower, go find some coffee and a bagel, and then come back to the apartment and work on poems until I need to leave for Manhattan.

Yesterday's classes in Jersey City were fun--each an entirely different teaching experience, so that was great practice for me. The first was a largish AP Lit class, composed of the kinds of kids who usually sign up for such classes: a few serious literature lovers but mostly students who are pragmatic about its usefulness on college applications. These kids are primed for analysis, and I had only 50 minutes to surprise them into engaging as makers first, examiners second. So I dictated a Celan poem and gave them a writing prompt; then they read aloud a Sexton poem, and I gave them another prompt. After each writing prompt I then had them go back to the poem under discussion and engage with it . . . but asking them to make their own drafts between reading the model and talking about the model--creating a gap that belonged solely to them--felt very exciting. No one shared work. I did give them the opportunity but didn't expect them to take it. Not only was I new to them, but the class itself was unknown territory: they've only been in school for a couple of days. They have no trust-comfort yet, and I wasn't about to push them into that space. But I know they wrote, and I know they thought about what they wrote. I could see that in their eyes; I could hear it in their subsequent responses to the model poems; I could see that they were surprised.

The second class wasn't so much a class as a conversation with three serious student poets who wanted to share their work with me. Again, we only had 50 minutes, but we listened to work, reacted to it, talked about next steps, they asked me questions . . . They were eager and sweet and lovely to spend time with, and their work was strong and exciting.

This is a big urban high school, the city's academic magnet institution. These kids are all college-bound, many for Ivies and Little Ivies. I went to a Little Ivy myself, so I recognize the signs. No matter what worries lie below--about class status, racial discrimination, family situations--these kids understand that they are expected to succeed at a very high level. In that way they are entirely different from my central Mainers, yet young people everywhere are so dear, so obstinate, so open, such liars, such clowns, so fragile, so sturdy, so full of pulsing energy and lethargy. I am endlessly moved and frustrated and entertained by them.

On the train ride back to Brooklyn I was surrounded by a pack of middle school boys who accidentally clanked their water bottles on people's knees and spilled Chex Mix all over the place and had no idea where their feet were. My eyes filled; these children were so . . . themselves. I don't know why I am such a sucker for the awkward, idiotic charm of youth. But I do love it.

Good morning from Brooklyn, where I am getting ready to roust myself into my work day. So far the weather here has been cloudy and warm--not hot, but more summery than Maine has felt lately--and last night, when Steve, Paul, Lily, and I were walking through Gowanus, I found myself imagining what the place must have smelled like fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago. The dense pong of urban life: it must have been almost intolerable. Sanitation is one of the great boons of the modern world.

In a few minutes I'll get into the shower, get dressed, get out the door--heading first over to Paul's for breakfast, then to Jersey City to teach. I'm a bit apprehensive about teaching, but then I always am. I know I'm decent at the job, but that doesn't mean I'm relaxed about it. Teaching is a performance, and a performance keys me up.