You know I'm not one to complain about weather, but ninety degrees in Maine in May is uncanny and I'm glad we've returned to spring. Temperatures are mid-50s this morning and aren't supposed to climb higher than the low 60s all day. That's a good change. I don't think I lost anything to the heat wave, but the cool-weather plants are stressed and they'll need water and a few plain days to relax and recover.

This evening I'm hosting my poetry group here, so I have a few this-and-thats to do to get ready for guests. But mostly I'll be focusing on the new long draft that has suddenly risen into my thoughts . . . a sonnet cycle about dead friends: though it's not so much a cycle as a series of enwrapped sonnets woven into a single poem.

Yesterday I finished those interview questions, read more of a friend's manuscript, and, suddenly, as I sat in my study staring idly into the hot back yard, I began to hear the sonnet draft take shape, words still unchosen but the cadence settling into place, emotional tremor building, names pulsing. So far there are only two woven sonnets on paper, with the third just begun, but momentum is trembling, a drop teetering at the edge of an overfull glass . . . there is a sensation of almost-writing that is not so different from the sensation of about-to-have-a-migraine.

I won't say "I hope I can write today" because I have to write today. Any delay for chores or obligations will just intensify the aura. The poem will happen because it must.

This is one of the best feelings in the world.