Today, after lunch, I'll depart for Mount Desert Island, which no doubt will be clogged with traffic and overrun by visitors. I am so used to the place in the off-season, to puttering around the park during our peaceable April and November visits to the cottage, but now is the height of tourist frenzy and it will be a different place entirely. This time of year the cottage is filled with paying customers, so I'll be staying in Weslea's spare room instead . . . but at least I'll have the cove in my sights, dear horizon, dark scent of tide and brine.

If you're localish: we're reading at the Bass Harbor Library, in Bernard, at 5:30 tonight. Then tomorrow I'll head home and start girding myself for this weekend's class: two days centering on the influence of prose syntax on new poem drafts. These classes are work, of course, but they also allow me space to write, and I could use a weekend of new poem drafts right about now.