It sure is humid out there. My hair is curling like crazy, and so are the paperback covers. Through the open screens, late-summer cicadas scrape their thick sandy endless hum across the hours. Beyond the continuo, a gull screeches, a screen door slaps.

I'd like to hang sheets on the line, but will laundry dry today? It seems unlikely.

Despite the stickiness, the house has not felt ridiculously hot, and I spent most of the day beside the window in my little study, wandering between chair and standing desk: reading for the chapbook project, reading my kid's screenplay, reading Aurora Leigh, searching for a poem to read at the wedding; editing the Substack piece, drafting a fundraising letter, working on conference paperwork, recording poems for a class . . . so much to juggle, but I am making progress.

Tomorrow afternoon we leave for Vermont, and I'd like to imagine that my desk will be cleared off--not probable, but at least the lingering to-do list will be shorter. The manuscript I was editing has gone back to the author. The draft letter has gone out to its readers. The new Poetry Lab Notes post is now available on Substack. I'm glimpsing a couple of possible routes for the chapbook collection.

Today will start with a faculty meeting, but then I'm thinking I might work on some new poems. I'm feeling the swirl of the unsaid rising and shifting behind my eyes--an actual physical sensation, and one I should pay attention to, because it often presages writing. Something, I have no idea what, wants to become words.