The world is a wilderness, in which we may indeed get our station changed, but the move will be out of one wilderness station unto another.

      --Thomas Boston, quoted by Alice Munro in her story "A Wilderness Station"


What man so wise, what earthly wit so ware,
As to descry the crafty cunning train
By which Deceit doth mask in visor fair,
And cast her colors dyed deep in grain
To seem like Truth, whose shape she well can feign.

     --Sir Edmund Spenser, from The Faerie Queen


And after pain, the calm--dark records on dark shelves:
Some notion of romance we never got over,
Some sweet past theme we kept trying to recover,
Some concept of ourselves as more than our lost selves.

     --Joe Bolton, from "Prelude: Late Twentieth-Century Piece"


Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction.

     --Flannery O'Connor, from "The Nature and Aim of Fiction"


Six years of such small preoccupations!
Six years of shuttling in and out of this place!
O my hunger! My hunger!
I could have gone around the world twice
or had new children--all boys.
It was a long trip with little days in it
and no new places.

     --Anne Sexton, from "Flee on Your Donkey"

Up here in the frozen north, spring committals are an unpleasant ritual. Anyone who dies when the ground is frozen has to wait for burial till after thaw, and this is what happened to the family of our 13-year-old friend who died of brain cancer in January.

So yesterday morning, we all gathered round the gravesite for the committal ceremony. It was a beautiful morning: birches glowing on the stony hillside, a woodpecker rapping. I was there with my son, who was weeping, of course. "It is so terrible for her friends," said the dead girl's father to me later. "They don't have much experience with losing things yet."

Suddenly, just before the end of the ceremony, there was a scuffle in the front row, then a scream of "Call 9-1-1! She's having a heart attack!" The girl's grandmother was on the ground, the local EMT was flying down the hill in his winged work boots to fetch the ambulance, the school nurse was on the grass beside the grandmother, the crowd was shocked and scared. I looked over at my son, and he had turned a dreadful shade of green. He, too, dropped to the ground, though still under his own volition, and put his head between his knees. He did not quite pass out, but he was close.

The incident had as happy an ending as one could hope for: the grandmother had simply fainted from exhaustion and stress. However, the scene was difficult to erase from our minds, and my son was in a state of intense grief for a long time afterward.

Because I know, tomorrow morning, I won't have a chance to send you a note, I'm sending you a quick one now. The day will start off with Aliza's graveside committal service and end with a benefit show for the Aliza Jean Family Foundation in the evening. It will be another hard road all over again, but maybe I'll see one or two of you at the grange tomorrow evening.

The most surprising thing has happened to me. I have started writing a short story.

I have not written a story for 25 years. An oddly enough, Salamander, the magazine that accepted that last story, lo these many years ago, just accepted one of my western Pennsylvania poems this week. This is mere coincidence, but still it adds to the peculiarity of the moment.

Here's what happened: I was grinding away at a chapter about an Amy Lowell poem, and suddenly a line leaped into my head: "Where she lived there wasn't much choice when it came to finding a second husband." Clearly (to my ear, anyway) this line is not poetry. But it was something; it was a trigger; it made me wonder where she lived and why she wanted a second husband and what might have happened to the first. And now I am almost four pages in and just beginning to discover what's going on with this character.

We'll see if I ever manage to finish it. I am trying not to doubt my stamina, but I do doubt it. In the past I have written some truly horrible short stories.

Missionaries (1758)

Dawn Potter

We started early, took our Horses

And climbed upon a steep Hill,

Until Thomas’s beast tumbled on the Rocks,

Rolling down and down like a shattered Wheel.

We started early, boiled some Chocolate.

Our surviving Horse could not be found.

Thomas shot a Squirrel and broke his Gun.

I felt a dismal Impression grow upon me.

We started early from this barren Place

So shocking and dark on a Winter’s Morn.

Passing through thick Bushes of Briar,

Thomas muttered a slew of impure Words.

We started early, with intent to cross the River,

But in Vain, so we went Smart to Work

And built a Raft. The Wolves and Owls

Made a great Noise in the Night.

We started early, fell in with Five of the King’s Men

Who told us the disagreeable News,

That the French had infused bad Notions

Into the Minds of the Indians.

We started early, for Time seemed precarious.

Entering a Town, we learnt of Skirmishing.

Rumour declared a Captive had been burnt,

Which grieved All to a great degree, even Thomas.

We started early, again reached the River,

But I had forgot my Blanket,

And Thomas’s black Oak Raft

Sank as soon as it touched cold Water.

We started early, for the Ice was violent.

Thomas hallooed till he was Tired.

Then he cut Wood and cleared Snow,

Whilst I designed a small Cabin of Hides.

We lay by a Beaver Dam.

It snowed the whole Day.

Thomas was discontent with his Lot,

But I pulled my Belt a little tighter.

I woke early, to find the Storm had eased.

Angry boot Prints marched Town-ward.

I was thus obliged to carry

Much deserted Baggage.

[from Chestnut Ridge, a verse-history-in-progress of southwestern Pennsylvania]

Breaking news: Teresa Carson of CavanKerry Press (and the associate director of the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching) interviews me about the conference.

Yesterday evening, the following remark popped up on my Facebook wall. It was written by my 15-year-old son, and the "friend" in question is someone he's known since infancy. To say that I'm impressed is putting it mildly. Not only do I admire my son's moral conviction, but I am delighted by the clarity of his argument: the way in which he honed in on censorship and faulty logic but did so calmly and efficiently. He posted this status without talking to his parents first, without fretting over wording or approach. I had nothing at all to do with it, which makes me extraordinarily happy.

Reason #1,000 for loving my ninth grader: his fervor and his humanity. Reason #1,000 for loving his college-age brother: he was the first person to like his little brother's status. Then he sent me an email that said, "I'm proud of him."

One of my "friends" just posted a screenshot of a tweet talking about Jason Collins coming out as gay, and how the media was paying too much attention to him and didn't care that Tim Tebow was a Christian. I wrote a very long comment that he promptly deleted and then blocked me. So I'm just going to put this into a status: Christians aren't treated as second class citizens in this country. There are so many open Christians in sports that everyone is used to it. Jason Collins coming out was a huge deal. He's going to get threats for this. And yet he's doing something he believes in. No one's going to threaten Tim Tebow for being a Christian. Christians are allowed to get married. Christians aren't insulted for something they can't control. People need to start realizing that gay marriage isn't a bad thing.