The temperature is 25 degrees this morning, and the ground is still patched with snow from Sunday's storm. My garden is done for: the wet snow has smashed the last few fall greens into pulp. The storm coincided with the clock shift, so now it really does feel like winter: darkness creeping in at four in the afternoon, a fire burning all day in the stove, lamplight glinting on snow crystals, a flock of juncos fluttering up from the driveway. It's time for me to start thinking about baking Emily Dickinson's black cake.

I am not very like Dickinson. She was tiny and I am tall. She lived in a big brick house in the middle of town. I live in a small aluminum-sided house in the middle of nowhere. She was a spider in her web, waiting for vibrations, then biting. I am more like a chipmunk running back and forth, back and forth, back forth, in and out of my hole, my cheeks crammed with sunflower seeds. Notice, however, how interested we both are in food. Also, a cat might eat either of us.

Drama's Vitallest Expression is the Common Day
That arise and set about Us--
Other Tragedy

What a bizarre storm! Wind, sleet, snow, sleet, wind; trees and power lines down everywhere, except for in our yard. We had just one power flicker and were otherwise unscathed--most likely because Tom had already cut down a couple of failing maples earlier this fall. But people all over town are still without power, and I have seen many photos of trees blocking roads. The worst story I have heard is from an acquaintance who was trapped in an ambulance between two sets of downed power lines while trying to get her son into Bangor for an emergency appendectomy. (Thankfully, they got him into surgery just in time, and he will be fine.)

I am glad we got this storm out of the way before Tuesday. We're dealing with one of those every-single-vote-counts governor's races, though why anyone would even consider voting to reelect the nation's most embarrassing governor is beyond me. Meanwhile, the Democrat and the Independent, who are more or less the same boring guy dressed in slightly different ties, risk canceling one another out, though the Independent has mentioned that his followers should feel free to vote for someone else if they think he can't win . . . which he can't. This race is like a dull headache that won't go away. I'd like to think that Governor Loudmouth's Christie-esque hijinx with that sassy Fort Kent nurse did him some damage, but an irrational fear of illness doesn't follow party lines. I have heard more than one liberal say, "Well, to give him credit, you can't be too careful," which by the way is bullshit, because you can be too careful and end up damaging not only individual lives and reputations but also the necessary and heroic response of specialists among people who really are living in terror.

I hope your state is in a better mood than mine is.

I apologize for not writing yesterday, but I was on the road early, heading west to Farmington for a whirlwind filming session. Wes McNair, the state's poet laureate, had invited a dozen or so Maine poets to read two poems for the camera and then informally answer two questions about poetic influence. Eventually edited versions of these videos will appear on a website called Poets in Public, a project linked to Wes's Take Heart newspaper column, which is a Maine-based version of Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry. So on a rainy Saturday morning, in the darkened halls of a mostly empty state university building, I kept running into poets I knew, who were likewise gently pacing the dim corridors, staring around in bemusement and curiosity while also worrying about their hair. It was kind of comic.

The timing of the sessions was fortuitous, weather-wise. Today we are supposed to get smacked with our first winter storm--five to nine inches of heavy slush combined with strong winds and trees that are still carrying leaves . . . a guaranteed power outage, I'd say. So if you don't hear from me tomorrow morning, be assured that the wood stove is burning brightly, the kettle is steaming on the gas range, the candles are lit, and we are spending a pleasant few hours around the kitchen table peering at the dim reflections of Scrabble tiles. Here's hoping the off-the-grid bliss doesn't devolve into no water and a warming freezer. That always takes the shine off the candle fun.

If I have power tomorrow, I might write an epistle to you about the Maine governor's race. Unless I find something better to write about.

Last night, as I sat fuming in the high school parking lot, waiting for student actors whose rehearsal was running an hour late, I was fully aware that my irritation was fueled not only by the fact that I have a son whose phone is never charged, turned on, or in the pocket of the pants he is wearing but also because I have been ignoring my own desperate need to write something, anything, that doesn't belong to someone else.

I think, sometimes, about what John Fowles said when he was writing about his trajectory as a novelist: “I had been deliberately living in the wilderness; that is, doing work I could never really love, precisely because I was afraid I might fall in love with my work and then forever afterwards be one of those sad, faded myriads among the intelligentsia who have always had vague literary ambitions but have never quite made it.” Compared to most of my peers, I have had considerable time and space to do my real work. I've written a number of books and composed thousands of poems and essays. Since the age of six, I have been reading and reading and reading. At the same time, I like teaching, and I like editing, and I think I'm good at both of these jobs. To a certain extent, I disagree with Fowles: I think that my day jobs do feed my private work. For a writer, editing other people's work is like playing scales and etudes: technical practice, a way of staying sharp, but also an education in coming to terms with the necessities  and confusions of another writer's individual style.

Still, it is service work, tending to another person's manuscript. Like teaching, the task is give, give, give; and as Fowles pointed out, it is easy to borrow that absorption as an excuse for giving up on one's own ambitions as an artist. Creation requires a deep selfishness--not at every moment of the day, not even at most moments. Nonetheless, the selfishness is imperative. Finding balance is a thin phrase for this ruthless juggling of time and attention, obligation and desperation, mine and yours, come here and go away.

It's another one of those mornings: Boy misses the bus, Dog and Cat are tumbling up and down and up and down the stairs, "Ziggy Stardust" is stuck in my head.

Tom is frying eggs. When I complain, "Why 'Ziggy Stardust'?" he asks, "Are you from Mars?"

Dog and Cat, in a frenzy of happiness, crash among the table and chair legs. Boy, who is supposed to be folding his laundry, sits on the edge of his bed sniggering at his iPad. Fog peers through the windows.

"Just because I'm from Earth," I tell Tom, "doesn't mean I've always got Earth, Wind, and Fire songs stuck in my head."

All of which explains why, 20 minutes later, I'm wasting time watching a video of "Boogie Wonderland," which, by the way, features outfits that out-glitter Ziggy's and serve as a reminder that Mars and Earth have much in common.

And now enough of this silliness. Go back to work.

Soccer season is over. The boys suffered a big loss last night, Paul cried, his girlfriend held his hand in the car, I drove into the dark. I thought of correcting the comma splices in that sentence, but semicolons are too heavy, periods too final. It is autumn, and perhaps autumn is the season of splices--fallen leaves underfoot, high school boys weeping, a World Series game sputtering on the radio, the eyes of cats glinting on the roadside. This is the season of Blakean sunsets, jagged clouds splashed with lemon, salmon, plum. Startled sparrows fly up from the grass as the cars pass, and threads of smoke rise from the chimneys of window-lit farmhouses, tidy ranch houses, collapsing trailers. A month from now, at the strike of a shovel, the earth will ring like a tamped bell--muffled, ironbound. Branches will crack and sigh in the cold. Today, the long grass glistens, it peeps through a blanket of gold, it shines in the rain, but the air is dark, I cannot see the grass, I only know it is there, I only imagine the shine. On a late autumn morning, morning comes late. Paul has gone back to bed, unable to face school today, exhausted by his tears. Oh, the small tragedies of our lives. They feel, as we live them, as large as the large ones.

Paul, 2nd from left, with big hair and black sweats

Today is my younger son Paul's 17th birthday. He was a shy boy who struggled with social interactions, especially with adults--a child who very often chose to stay in his room organizing his baseball cards by nationality of last name, or dressing up as Weasel Man, or listening to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I look at him today, and I see all of those early activities reflected in his motivations, interests, and obsessions. He loves music and theater and growing his hair into a stylish mop; he thinks hard about literature and politics; he is a dedicated teammate and a sweet and romantic boyfriend. He has struggled hard to manage his shyness but has learned to channel it into performance and conversation. He has learned to read other people's needs and reactions. This past weekend, when we went to Hampshire to visit his brother during parents' weekend, Paul turned to me, without provocation, and said, "Mom, you look much younger than 50," as if he thought I might be anxious about my age, surrounded as I was by bastions of hippie parents. It was a silly moment, and we laughed, but it was a tender moment too--a child working to take care of a parent.

I think most parents of small children imagine that their tiny dependents will grow up and away from them. They envision a looming emptiness. And, yes, children do necessarily leave home and develop independent lives. But they also become your best friends. There's no one you know better, who knows you better. They are teasing chatterers who raid your cupboards for coffee; they are peaceable companions on the living room couch; they are idealists and satirists, sharers of worry and excitement. I am so proud to know them.

Spring on the Ripley Road

Dawn Potter

Knick knack, paddywhack,

Ordering the sun,

Learning planets sure is fun.

                        —Paul’s backseat song

Five o’clock, first week of daylight savings.

Sunshine doggedly pursues night.

Pencil-thin, the naked maples cling to winter.

             James complains,

             “It’s orbiting, not ordering.”

Everything is an argument.

The salt-scarred car rockets through potholes,

hurtles over frostbitten swells of asphalt.

             James explains, “The planets orbit the sun.

             Everything lives in the universe.”

Sky blunders into trees.

A fox, back-lit, slips across the road

and vanishes into an ice-clogged culvert.

              Paul shouts, “Even Jupiter? Even foxes?

              Even grass? Even underwear?”

Trailers squat by rusted plow trucks;

horses bow their searching, heavy heads.

The car dips and spins over the angry tar.

               James complains, “I’m giving you facts.

              Why are you so annoying?”

The town rises from its petty valley.

Crows, jeering, sail into the pines,

and the river tears at the dam.

               Paul shouts, “Dirt lives in the universe!

               I want to be annoying!”

Everywhere, mud.

Last autumn’s Marlboro packs,

faded and derelict, shimmer in the ditch.

               James says,

               “When you get an F in life,
               it’ll be your own fault.”

[From Same Old Story (CavanKerry Press, 2014). P.S. The final line should align with the rest of the stanza, but Blog says no.]