Well, here I am, finally: ensconced in ye olde couch corner, wrapped in my dopy red bathrobe, my cup-and-saucer of black coffee at the ready, cheerful Big Kitten peering out the window at sparrows, T upstairs clanking his cup down onto his saucer, then burrowing back under the covers. Home and its pedestrian delights . . . all three of us are very glad to be enjoying this Saturday morning love song.

The transition from Sarasota to this moment was a little rocky. We got home so late on Wednesday, then had to rip ourselves out of bed so early on Thursday, both of us rushing off to our individual versions of work. And then I barely slept in Bangor--too keyed up about too many things, but mainly the adrenaline of performance. I think the Poetry Night event went well: the teachers were very responsive to the prompts and conversation, and then I had the pleasure of dinner out with a pack of Monson Arts friends. But my body was jangled from travel and strange hours and on-stage nerves and missed meals. Also, I hadn't actually been alone for a week; and though I am sociable, I thrive best on regular doses of solitude. So I was kind of a mess.

But in retrospect, this was an unprecedented experience: to spend a week working so closely with such incredible friends and artists; to be with Tom the whole time, instead having to leave him; to then bring that energy with me back to my workaday world of Maine teachers and schools and young people and poems. I'm so grateful to the people of Sarasota who funded us, to Teresa for making it happen, and to the English teachers of Maine who welcomed me back into the fold.

I am also grateful for a weekend at home. I'll be grocery-shopping and doing housework and catching up on desk business and prepping for class and such. And I hope to walk and loll and finish the Elizabeth Bowen novel I've been trying to read for days. And Chuck will require plenty of Chuck time: he is overflowing with family joy.

 Good morning-- All's well, but I had a wacky sleeping schedule in Bangor: awake too late and then made up for it by sleeping too late. Heading back to Portland soon. Talk to you tomorrow--

Our flight was late leaving Sarasota yesterday evening, and by the time we finally arrived in Baltimore, our next flight was boarding, but eventually we got into Portland well after 11 p.m., then had to wait forever at baggage claim, and then thank god our neighbor generously picked us up and brought us home, where we quickly ate something (no dinner earlier other than airplane pretzels), then fell asleep hard, and by 6:30 a.m. T was out the door to work and here I am, befuddled and unable to end this sentence, trying to envision driving to Bangor in a couple of hours and putting on a performance . . . so, in other words, I'll talk to you tomorrow--

Yesterday we worked a half day, and after lunch we northerners were escorted to the Ringling Museum--really a complex of museums and performance venues that includes circus displays, art collections, a park, and John Ringling's Venetian-style palazzo jutting into Sarasota Bay.

It's March but already the Florida rose gardens are in bloom, and big birds stand around dozily in the sunshine, indifferent to the people who bustle past.

This evening three of us fly back to Portland (Gretch is staying for a few more days of work on another project), and then tomorrow I'll be on the road to Bangor . . . a wholly different landscape and setting, but still the link of poems and performance. Yesterday's coolish temperatures were a reminder of that shift, yet the place somehow encourages forgetfulness.

We stood on the terrace behind Ringling's mansion, where yachts used to sail in for parties in the 1920s. A steady wind blew in from the gulf, and the sea shimmered romantically, though the steps down to the water were a wreck of rubble from Hurricane Milton.

"The sunsets are famous here." I've overheard more than one person make some version of this comment. And indeed they are beautiful. But maybe I am too attuned to elegy.

Yesterday was performance day, so we started off slowly, with a walk and then an hour in the pool, before heading to the studio midday so our dancer could start her warm-up process.

All four of us pallid northerners have become quite attached to the pool. This is most surprising in my case as I can barely swim. But an outdoor heated pool is such a pleasure--both restful and scintillating for the body; sociable yet, as soon as I lean back to float, deliciously alone.

This project will ultimately have three parts--Slate, Mountain, Lake. For yesterday's event we were only performing Slate, but Lake and Mountain have also been part of our workdays. Each has come together in an entirely individual form, moving urgently into place as we've read over the materials together. It's been such an intense experience to feel this happening as a unit of four artists.

Teresa had invited about twenty-five people to what she was calling an open rehearsal of Slate. So though we were not under pressure to have a burnished final product, we did feel we were putting on a real performance. It began with poetry, then a dance with music, then a step back to talk about how the dance had been made from the individual words of the first poem. Then we moved into found pieces from high school yearbooks, mixed with movement and more original poems, an erasure piece from an obituary, and finally a closing dance involving all four of us.

I will have photos to post soon as Tom has been documenting the project steadily, and Teresa's husband John made a full video of the performance which may also be available at some point.

But the audience reaction was hugely gratifying. They had not known what to expect, and they responded whole-heartedly to the piece. They talked a lot about their feelings and reactions afterward, even asked if we could come back to Sarasota so they could see all three sections in their final forms. Maybe that will happen, maybe it won't, but the point is that they were excited and they wanted more.

Not everything can go perfectly in Florida. We got through two innings of the Orioles-Yankees game, and then the heavens let loose and an extremely inept grounds crew rushed onto the field in bare feet and struggled to drag the tarp over the infield. But it got stuck on something, so eventually they gave up and left third base to its fate. Throughout the downpour they scurried onto the exposed base paths dumping bags of drying agent around the sodden base so the place looked like a sandbox covered in anthills. We, fortunately, were sitting under an overhang within direct sight of the shenanigans at third base, so a good time was had by all. These were not major league grounds people. Definitely they are vying for a spot on the roster and I daresay most will get cut.

Eventually it became that clear the game was not likely to continue, so we admitted defeat and went out for Indian food instead. And then back in the apartment we sat around for a while and watched lightning flash over the keys. Probably I will never see another spring training game but for two innings the Orioles were far superior to the lackluster Yankees, and you don't see grounds crew comedy every day. I'd call it a win.

Today is our performance day. For reasons involving our dancer's prep needs and timing, we aren't going to the studio till noon, and then we'll work all afternoon until people start arriving at 4. Our staged rehearsal will run for 25 minutes, and then there will be a talk-back and mingling, and sometime this evening I'll get back to the apartment and then will immediately have to phone my son so we can do our NCAA brackets together.

But this morning will be quiet. As usual, wherever I go, I'm the first person up. But soon Tom will head out to take photos, and G and G and I will go out for walk by the water, and maybe later I'll even get a chance to sit around and read a little. That would be a novelty.

Yesterday, after work, we drove to the beach on Lido Key, and here we are, standing in water the color of sea glass, being happy together.

This has been a lovely trip, and the exotic surroundings are only part of the fun. For both of us working and hanging out with four other really smart, inventive, collaborative people who are also sweet and entertaining and non-fussy and hardworking has been fantastic.

Yesterday morning, before work, some of us went to the farmers' market and bought fresh berries and vegetables. So after the beach the four northerners made dinner in the apartment for the six of us. How dinner got made was more or less how the entire work day has gone--nobody was in charge but somehow people wandered in and out of the kitchen and produced a meal together.

Collaboration is magical.

 I am not good at remembering to take photos of anything except birds, and I will try to rectify that this morning as Teresa is picking us up early to go over to the beach on Lido Key.

In the park ponds, these noisy black-bellied whistling ducks congregate like mallards do in our northern ponds. I haven't yet had a chance to look through the bird books and identify the others that I saw there.

I've had almost no sitting-around-with-a-book moments since I stepped off the plane on Thursday. The four faculty members spent six hours together in the studio yesterday and we got a surprising amount of work done: not only fully shaping the content of part 1 of our three-part performance, but also blocking it out spacially. Then afterward the three northerners (plus Tom, when he returned from his long day of walking around town with a camera) got into the pool, and then we all made our way to Teresa and John's place for a sociable pizza night. So you see: yes, fun! But not much time to do any bird research yet.

And now I must rush off and drink coffee. You see how hard my life is.

Believe it or not, this is the daylight view from my living room window . . . Sarasota Bay.

We arrived around noon, a fairly expeditious trip, though since we'd been up since 3:30 we felt like we'd been on the road forever. When I stepped through the doors of baggage claim, my skin was shocked by the temperature change: 80 degrees and humid. My lank winter hair instantly began curling, and in the apartment we demonstrated our heat-starved northernness by immediately opening the windows and turning off the air conditioning, apparently a thing that no Floridians ever do.

Yesterday was mostly business: getting everyone from the airport, dealing with car rental and grocery shopping. Today we'll go to work. Exactly what that will mean I don't know, except that I think we need to get poems into the air.

I feel like I'm in an alien world. Florida is not a place I can easily imagine myself, even when I'm here. I look across this bay, ringed with highways and high-rises, and wonder what such an expanse would have been before Europeans arrived.  This is where Cabeza de Vaca set foot on North American soil. There is no silence now.

Apparently I made the correct decision not to travel north because this morning I see that half of my schools have already canceled because of the impending ice storm. Well, I'm relieved that this wasn't just me being spleeny; also relieved that I don't have to spend another sad class on zoom; also extremely relieved that I will not be driving through ice, snow, and freezing rain for three hours.

Instead, I've had two unexpected days at home, which has not only been a huge help as regards my editing schedule but is also allowing me to enter into this Florida adventure in a more relaxed way. Originally I planned to be teaching a full day up north, then making the long drive home, then rushing Chuck to the cat kennel, then rushing home and dealing with cat litter, trash, packing, refrigerator emptying, etc. I'll still have to deal with all of that end-of-the-day flurry, but at least the rest of the day will be less stressful.

You won't hear from me tomorrow morning as we have to be out of the house by 4:30 a.m. But if all goes smoothly, I'll be back to posting on Friday.

Argh, March. After a few days of warmth and melt, tomorrow will drop us back into cooler temperatures and rain, which is no big deal here in Portland. But up north the forecast is for sleet and freezing rain all day, so now I'm back to the everlasting conundrum: do I take the risk and drive to central Maine this afternoon, or do I zoom yet again with my students? Will they even have school if the weather is as crappy as it's forecast to be? Blah. With a plane to catch on Thursday morning, I can't take the risk of being trapped up there tomorrow. But how I hate to zoom with my young people.

Well, I guess I'll figure out something or other this morning. Rural Mainers love to shame those of us who don't like to drive in wretched weather, and after 20 years among them I still wrestle with my weak-mindedness in that regard. Also, I feel so guilty about zooming again. During our last class I was stuck in Brooklyn in a blizzard, and I said to the kids then: "This is it! No more zooming!" And now the weather gods are snickering and snorting gleefully among themselves. They always have the last word.

Enough about tomorrow. Today, at least, will be reliably gorgeous . . . another dose of sunshine and warmth, the scent of thawing earth, new green spikes among the muddy leaves. We've lost a lot of snow over the past few days. My back yard is almost visible again, and today I may mosey out there and investigate what's what under the mulch. March, your aggravations are legion, but every year you fool me again.

Yesterday's temperatures reached 60 degrees, and I glimpsed the first tulip and scylla leaves poking through the leafmold in the south-facing gardens along the foundation. We still have snow but it is soupy and thinning, and after another overnight in the 40s I can tell that even more has melted away.

T was working on taxes all day but took a break with me for a drive over to the Eastern Prom and a walk along the waterfront, where we watched happy wet dogs roll on the beach and strolled past about a thousand bleary-eyed young parents pushing strollers. Clearly it was "get the baby out of the house" day, and why not? The wind was warm, the puddles were deep, the gulls were skreeking . . . it was the kind of day when the sap is running in the maples and the hounds are lifting their noses into the breeze and the babies are kicking their feet and waving to strangers.

Otherwise, I got done what I needed to get done--mostly finishing my Aurora Leigh homework and magically not (yet) screwing up my part of the taxes. Today I'll be back at my desk cranking out another batch of editing before I hit the road for Wellington and Monson tomorrow afternoon. The press has kindly built the schedule for this project around my travels, but I'm still anxious about losing momentum as I will have zero time to do any manuscript work when I'm in Florida.

So today: edit edit edit, plus a walk, plus a few errands, plus the inevitable laundry and a few more hours of home time before the flurry begins.

Not only did the clocks change last night, but it's 44 degrees this morning in the little northern city by the sea--a double upheaval to confuse and confound us in our winter stronghold. Under the streetlights the wet asphalt glitters, and the snow piles look like melting ice cream edged in mud. It's still dark: no birds are singing yet, but I daresay they will be out in force this morning. Last week, during a minor warmup,  a sudden chorus of titmice, house finches, cardinals, nuthatches, chickadees, cedar waxwings, downy woodpeckers flash-mobbed the neighborhood. Today they're likely to give us a full orchestra production.

My new bathing suit arrived in the mail yesterday, and I love it, which is not a declaration one might expect from a 61-year-old very pale-skinned non-swimmer, but it's cute and comfortable and doesn't make me look terrible and has a decent amount of coverage for someone who gets sunburns just by thinking about them. I then spent a chunk of the day digging out summer clothes and trying on various things to see how I might manage my rehearsal clothes/street clothes challenge, given that I do not own even one pair of shorts but spend my northern summers in skirts and dresses. Young Chuck found this dressing-room project fascinating, and his participation means I will be traveling to Florida with a generous smear of black cat fur in my suitcase. But even with his help, I think I've mostly worked out a feasible wardrobe that won't take up much luggage space.

I expect this exposition on outfits is entirely uninteresting to you, but the trip is such a novelty in my life, and Tom is equivalently confounded. For two people who rarely talk about clothes, we are spending an awful lot of time talking about clothes.

Today, however, I plan to stop caring about them. What I want to do is to go for a long walk amid the snowmelt and listen to the bird symphony and snuff up the scents of wet earth. I want to finish reading Trollope's Doctor Thorne and find another fat but not too fat novel to pack for my travels. I want to cook chicken and wild mushroom risotto and read Aurora Leigh and not get into trouble with Tom for making mistakes on my taxes. All of that seems doable, except maybe for the tax part.

This morning, first thing, I had to drive our friends through ice and freezing rain to the bus station--the first leg of an extended journey that will eventually deposit them in Sarasota with us. Weather like this makes it hard to imagine that weather like Florida's really exists, yet in a week I will be sweaty.

For now, though, I am ensconced in my couch corner, nursing a belated cup of coffee and very glad not to be slithering through the glassy streets. Tom is asleep, Young Chuck is happily pencil-pushing a Dixon Ticonderoga into a tight corner behind the woodbox, and hazy first light is peering through bare and icy branches.

This weekend will mostly be devoted to pulling myself together for this ridiculous travel odyssey--north, then south, then north, then more north. So pharmacy, grocery store, laundry, suitcases, books to sell, books to read, presentation, lesson plans, manuscript . . . sun hat, winter hat, sunscreen, sandals, snow boots, reading outfit, work clothes . . . What a jumble.

We've spent months preparing for this Sarasota residency--researching, writing poems and scenarios, compiling possibilities, creating movement, all while trying to keep up with other important things, like our jobs. The project has been time- and thought-consuming, to say the least. Yet we haven't even begun to organize these materials into a coherent script. That's what will happen in Florida, and already the schedule feels tight, though we'll be in the studio full time every day. I know I'm carrying my load writing-wise, but I have little experience with performance design, and I worry about being a dead weight in that regard. I worry about a lot of things--such as dancing in public and remembering where my body is in space. But that's the point of this collaboration: four different artists are coming together to create something they wouldn't otherwise know how to make. I am trying to trust in that.

***

On another note: I've got two spaces left for this summer's Conference on Poetry and Learning at Monson Arts. If you want to hang out with the best colleagues possible, learn how multidisciplinary collaborations can enrich you as a poet and/or a teacher, eat delicious food, swim in a gorgeous lake, sleep in a comfortable bed, and also see whatever the hell we come up with in Sarasota, sign up now! And please do reach out with any questions . . . I would love to see you there.

We got a coating of new snow overnight--not enough to shovel, and no doubt it will melt as soon as the sun comes out, but sloppy for dragging around recycling bins and compost pails this morning. I'll get outside to do those things shortly, but for the moment I am recovering from a dream in which I was seething . . . I don't think I've ever been so angry within a dream before.

The scene was set in what may have been the Harmony house. Certainly the woodstove I remember is the Harmony stove, which two visiting young men decide to disassemble, hiding the parts around the house. When I discover this, I am very upset and tell them they have to put it back together. But of course parts are bent, and nothing will seal right, they are filling the rooms with ash and soot, and as they bumble I become increasingly livid until my anger is nuclear . . . I am transported with fury--

And then I wake up.

So now I am sitting here with my coffee, feeling fury drain from my veins and muscles as one feels hard labor drain away. Pure anger is so physical: the entire body clenches in sympathetic ire. Of course my anger over damage to the woodstove is entirely understandable, whether in dream or real life. In Harmony that stove was life or death. Our daily world revolved around it. So naturally it has entered my subconscious as a vital center. What surprises me more is my sheer hatred of those young men. Mostly my dreams adore young men--as one would expect, given my maternal history. But this pair . . . if looks could kill, I would have blasted them.

And that in itself is an unnerving residue: the lingering sensation of hate.

It's Thursday, my least favorite day of this week, because I have a mammogram scheduled for this morning and I hate mammograms. However, it too shall pass and then I can focus on the more enjoyable elements of the day: fetching my CSA order and going out to write with my friends. Thanks to the Brooklyn blizzard, I haven't attended my writing group for two weeks, and I'll be missing the following two as well when I'm in Florida and Bangor. So tonight's the night, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

Young Charles will be sorry to learn that today is also housework day. His feelings about the vacuum cleaner are similar to my feelings about the mammogram machine. However, spring daylight is lifting everyone's spirits. In these lengthening afternoons he sits in a sun puddle at the open front door, snuffing up the drafts that leak through the crooked storm door and staring enthusiastically at gulls and dog walkers and delivery guys. His pleasure is my pleasure: a happy animal is a joyous sight, and the Big Kitten overflows with cheer. "Hi, Chuck!" shouts Max the mailman through the door; and when Chuck beams and presses his nose against the glass, for a moment I can pretend that the world is not going to hell.

Yesterday T stopped after work to talk to some long-time Harmony acquaintances who've since moved down to southern Maine. They wanted his advice about a carpentry project. Among other things, they hope to put in a second bathroom, which made me laugh because I remember the days when they didn't even have a refrigerator, let alone a bathroom, in the log cabin they'd built themselves from the trees on their land. Ah, the sins we commit, down here in the diaspora . . . Tom and I wallowing in furnace heat, our friends dissatisfied with a single flush toilet.

I was under the impression we were supposed to get an inch or so of snow last night, but from the window it looks as if considerably more fell. Our across-the-street neighbor is outside in shorts and a plaid coat shoveling his driveway in the dark, a vision that metaphorically sums up something or other: fill in the blank yourself. March in the north country can drive even the sanest of us into mad science and despair. So who knows?--wearing shorts while shoveling snow may be a first step toward playing recklessly with lightning and drinking smoky bubbly stuff out of beakers. I wonder if I should warn his family.

Yesterday I sent the poetry ms off to another publisher. Perhaps that was a good idea; perhaps it was a March-hare move; perhaps I should stop fretting and start studying world religions or take up knitting or maybe dabble a little in mad science. This is the season for blaming everything on the weather: the days are getting longer! the snowdrops are budding! the little birds are singing! eight fucking inches of snow fell overnight! [Cue thunderclap and evil laugh here.]

Ah, well. In less silly moments I get a lot of work done. Today I'll fidget with high school plans and the editing project, and possibly even deal with the stacks of books that are overtaking my study. I'm still reading The Pillow Book and Aurora Leigh, and now I've added Trollope's Doctor Thorne to the pile. This morning I'll get onto my mat, and eat oatmeal and fruit for breakfast, and enact the part of a wholesome and discreet citizen, and only Young Chuck will be fooled but he believes anything.

It was frigid yesterday, and this evening an inch or so of snow will fall. But by next week temperatures are supposed to rocket into the 60s--classic March weather hysteria in Maine.

Meanwhile, I'm making progress on my many pre-Florida obligations: turned in an editing sample to the press, printed out my MCELA presentation and gathered poem possibilities for the reading, dealt with conference registration questions. In the afternoon I went for a walk with Betsy, then made Manhattan clam chowder and finished rereading Little Drummer Girl, possibly my favorite Le Carre novel . . . not only one of the best depictions I've seen of 1980s-era western confusions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but also an incredible foray into the way in which men, even supposedly good guys, manipulate vulnerable women into committing heinous acts.

Today I'll get back to editing, and in the afternoon I've got a zoom meeting with Teresa and Jeannie regarding a linked sonnet project we've been working on. Then I'll roast a chicken and probably somewhere in the interstices start prepping for next week's Monson class. And no doubt I'll fidget a bit more with the new manuscript. At the moment I'm calling it Traveler, and it is making me cry.

I'm awake too early this morning, but at least it's Monday's sleep I'm wasting, not the weekend's. Outside, the temperature has dropped back to single-digits: 8 degrees, according to my phone. I have a million things to do this week--editing, class planning, presentation planning, residency prep, zoom meetings, household chores, plus a mammogram--but at least I won't be on the road. And I'm starting things off with a queasy stomach, but that's likely just nerves and last night's overly rich dinner. (Tom made a very elaborate Shanghai pork belly dish that was tasty but extreme.)

Now dark presses against the window panes. I hear an Amtrak train hum through the crossing at the end of the street. On the back of the couch the Big Kitten chirps and purrs. Coffee steams in a white cup.

I'm still feeling a little fragile, poem-wise. Making the new collection has sapped me in some way. I don't know what or how to think of it.

Yesterday's peaceful vibe was shattered when water suddenly started pouring onto the kitchen counter via a screw hole in the wall. "Ice dam," Tom said, and was quickly up on a ladder scraping snowpack away from the dormer seam. He got the flow stopped almost immediately, but ugh. If it's not one problem, it's another around here. (The peaceful vibe was also shattered by war, but I am not going to talk about that just now. You/we are already overwhelmed.)

Well, nothing more can be done about the roof till spring, other than to make sure we keep that section raked. Limp into the future: that's my household motto.

Otherwise the day was easygoing (except for war). I caught up on a bunch of computer chores. We took a walk to the Asian grocery. I made potato pancakes for dinner. Young Chuck got his nails trimmed and later, with much effort and concentration, pushed a sliver of kindling under the rug.

This morning the little birds are singing loudly (despite war). They must be reacting to the longer days, and I wonder if they sense the tree sap rising as well. Today I'm going to walk up the street to see if our neighborhood snowdrops are visible yet. When I was in Brooklyn, I saw a few daffodil spikes poking up in front gardens, all ready to be squashed by the blizzard. Life is so obstinate. (As is death.)

I've been thinking about my manuscript . . . not fretting exactly; more just puzzling over my lifelong urge to make books that hardly anyone will read. If published, this would be my seventh full-length poetry collection, my eleventh book. The number is startling. How have I managed this? I still picture myself as the child with a scarlet "Sloppy and Lazy" sign pinned to her metaphorical chest.

There's a sadness in finishing a book, though of course there's pleasure too. Perhaps that's why I resist putting together manuscripts until all of a sudden I can't help myself and they fly together as if under enchantment. The emotional complications: why-bother intersecting with ambition . . . not ambition as in fame or any expectation of readership. Rather, as in climbing the impossible path. The book as the pause, as one acknowledges the ever harder task to come.

You know the painting I mean.

.