At 6 a.m. it's 74 degrees outside, with a small hot wind. I turned on the air machine last night, so the house is relatively cool at the moment, but we are in for a scorcher.

I am feeling unsettled and sad, having just woken up from a dream about my grandfather's farm, which was in deep decay . . . piles of rotting tires, turpentine pouring through broken floors, and the perimeter surrounded by new-built castles and harsh electronic gates . . . the shabby land in its prison. In the dream we'd forgotten the place had really been gone for more than 30 years. All I could think of in dream-time was the fact that no one had changed the sheets for three decades; no one had turned on the lamps. I had no flashlight. I was walking the land by the reflected light of a knife blade.

This place that survives only in memory and in poems. Every time I dream of it, I am so lonesome, all over again.

I think yesterday's craft talk went pretty well . . . at least people talked, and shouldn't that be the sign? I was pretty nervous about it, however, and am glad to have it behind me. Though I guess I now know how to do a craft talk, and don't need to be nervous if it ever happens again.

It's been so hot and sticky here. The air machine was on all day and all night, but I think I should be able to turn it off today, as we've got a slight temperature respite. Tomorrow will be in the 90s, and I'll save the electricity bill for then.

So, this morning, housework and garden work; this afternoon, teaching. Meanwhile, Tom will be working on the shed, poor man . . . 

The air is so thick this morning. It's 71 degrees at 5:30 a.m., and I guess I'm going to have to break down and turn the air machine back on. But for the moment I still have the windows open to the warmth, to the jays squawking, to the greeny early morning light. 

Last night I went out to write at the salon, and now I've got three solid blurts to consider, someday, when I find my leisure again. I doubt that will be soon, as I have to teach a craft lecture this morning for the Frost Place Poetry Seminar, a writing class tomorrow afternoon for the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, and I'll be editing in between.

I've been catching up on the seminar's faculty readings; I've still got one more to go, which I hope I can fit in this morning. I haven't attended any of the other seminar talks or workshops (mostly because I was afraid I'd chatter inappropriately), so the readings are giving me a sense of previous conversations, and may help me call on some themes or ideas that have circled among the participants this week.

Otherwise, same-old, same-old . . . laundry and watering, cooking and sweeping. I have two big eggplants to harvest today, so that's what we'll be having for dinner, with peaches and whipped cream for dessert. A summer plate. A prayer for rain.

Yesterday's little jaunt to western Maine was so, so lovely. Zanne and I drove out about an hour and half to Lucia's house, on the shore of a clear and quiet lake. We ate lunch looking out over the water, as the hummingbirds whizzed by and the loons wailed. And then we went swimming in water that was as warm and welcoming as a bath . . . no biting insects, no tangling weeds, just dragonflies and conversation and late-afternoon summer sun. It might have been the nicest swim I've ever taken, which means a lot coming from me, because I am fussy, incompetent, and uncomfortable swimmer.

So today I am feeling sweetened and refreshed. I've got a big new editing project on my desk, and a late-morning meeting with the Monson folks, and all of my usual house and garden demands, but now I can think about my swim too.

I need to spend time with Eliot's Four Quartets today, and I need to fiddle a bit with tomorrow's craft lecture. I'd like to watch the videos of the seminar readings, which I haven't been able to attend live. 

But for now I am sitting in the early-morning darkness, listening to the cicadas creak, listening to a plane take off, listening to an ambulance wail. The city awake. 

 

Yesterday was a good day. I spent the morning with my friend Julia, walking through the neighborhood and chattering about Sexton and Millay and raising pigs and fixing poetry education and gardening on ledge and other such riveting topics. Then, after lunch, I started a new editing project and got paid for a teaching job and was invited to read this fall with my beloved Meg Kearney and ate too many cheese curls. I sat outside in the evening warmth with Tom and won at cribbage, then made a frittata for dinner and listened to the Red Sox play a good game of baseball for a change.

This morning I'll work at my desk, and this afternoon I'm going with some poet friends for an outing out to western Maine to eat lunch with another friend, swim in her lake (maybe; I'm a reluctant swimmer), and no doubt yakking the whole way there and back. Poets are so talky! Is it a reaction to how solitary we are while writing? Or is it a side-effect of word drunkenness?

This poet social life is just strange. For decades, I rarely saw a poet. And now they are everywhere.

Apparently my reading last night for the Frost Place Seminar was available on Facebook Live, but I didn't know it would be, so didn't let you know. However, here's the video, if you're interested. I had a webcam emergency right before the reading, so you'll see that I'm zooming from Tom's badly lit study. Despite the shadows, you'll also get to see Tom's photos behind me, which might be a nice change from looking at my books.

Okay: step 1 of unexpected work week behind me. I think the reading went okay, despite technical upsets, and I'd best figure out that webcam situation before Friday. 

This morning my friend Julia is stopping by for a visit and a walk, so that will be a refreshment. The air is notably cool this morning, though the day will heat up quickly. We need rain again, as always, yet the beans and cucumbers and peppers are pouring in, and above them the sunflowers are grinning and nodding. Summer still manages to delight.

And I will be chipping away at my craft talk, and reading, and watering, and hanging laundry, and weeding the sidewalk gardens, and perhaps Erato, that doughty muse, will amble by with her dog and her coffee cup, and croak me a little song.

Bachelor's buttons with a background of shed: T worked from morning till night, and I did housework and some editing and filled the vases. I love the blue of these blossoms, a rare cerulean among the midsummer oranges and golds.

And these are my first cut sunflowers, staring out of their ginger jar. Good practice: always check a sunflower for bees before you bring it into the house.

And here is the carpenter, screwing down strapping to hold the metal sheathing. He labored till close to 8 p.m. to get the job done, but now we have a solid roof.

I feel bad that he's got a whole work week ahead of him; he put in some long, long days this weekend. 

* * *

With my own week suddenly in an uproar, I was glad to snatch some editing time yesterday. I've mostly finished up that little project: a few tweaks and I can send it off to the author. Then I can turn my attention to preparing my Friday craft talk and those Saturday writing workshops, not to mention tonight's reading. Midweek is scattered with poet visits--Julia here on Tuesday, a day trip to Lucia's on Wednesday--so I need to buckle down today.

* * *

My poem "For David" appears in Vox Populi today. It's dedicated to my friend David Dear, who emailed me the Plath quotation in the epigraph, which I then used as a writing prompt.