Last night, at the salon, my phone blurped; I stopped to check it in case it was my kid with emergency kid stuff and the headline TRUMP INDICTED blared forth, and I said to the poets, "HEY! TRUMP INDICTED," and everyone stopped writing and said, "Ooooh," and we fluffed our feathers and harrumphed and laughed and sighed and kicked the table legs and then . . . we went back to writing and we forgot you, you asshole. You did not show up in a single draft. Score one for the rule of art, one for the rule of law, and zero for the rule of monstrous pus-filled cysts.

* * *.

Okay, rant over, and I will return to my usual amiable self. [But, Lordy, that was a satisfying moment last night.]

* * *

I am in a highly good mood this morning as, late yesterday afternoon, I finished the first, and largest, stage of the giant editing project. Though there will be more to do, this was by far the most intense stage, and my workload has instantly become more manageable. Today, for instance: I can work on class planning; I can work on poem and essay drafts; I can keep prepping for the video conversation; I can dust and vacuum . . . and the giant task will not be dangling over me like an Acme-built 1,000-pound anvil.

So today: a long walk with my neighbor. Maybe some gardening before the rain. Writing for the sake of me. Making something or other delicious for dinner. I can't wait.

My class turned out to be great yesterday--so lively and engaged, including a complex and wide-ranging conversation on how we define our own talent, what holds us back, what holds us up. It's amazing how bubbly those old Chinese poets can be, when they're dropped into a pond of teenagers. Afterward, the various staff members gathered for a meeting about end-of-year plans, so I got home later than usual, with my eyes all squinchy and exhausted. But no bad weather, no zoom, and a table full of engaged kids: thus, no complaints.

Today, back to the regular grind--editing, housework, a meeting--but I'm planning to go out to the salon tonight, which will be a respite. I think it will be a cold day, so no gardening or outdoor laundry, though I hope for a walk. My eyes are still pretty twitchy: the poor things have less and less stamina, and I use them so hard. A walk, housework, gardening: they're all rest for my eyes, if not for the other parts of me.

In Portland, crocuses are blooming everywhere, but up north the snow is still thick. Going back and forth yesterday was like jumping a fence between weather zones. Winter may be fading in central Maine, but it's not gone. Yet in the little city, bulbs are spiking everywhere; peas and spinach are planted; even the grass is hinting at green.

Today, opening day for baseball. Today, a high of 39 degrees. Today, firewood and hot tea and warm boots. Today, sprigs of infant greens thrusting through the soil. Today, tender morning light and the sweet whistle of a nesting cardinal. Today, frost on every windshield. Spring in Maine is every damn thing there is.

Unsettling dreams, and now a flat mauve sky sliced against a rusty horizon; and now the log trucks roaring past; and now the windless shiver of their absence. Monson, Maine, 6:15 a.m.

In a moment I will put on my boots and cross the street for coffee. In a moment I will pull myself together for a day with young people and books and cars and responsibility.

For now I am still vaguely feral, lurking. Everything feels strange in this strange dawn light.

                All pauses in space,

a violent compression of meaning

in an instant within the meaningless.

Even staring into the dim shapes

at the farthest edge; accepting that blur.

--from Ruth Stone's "Shapes"

I'm heading north this afternoon, teaching kids tomorrow, and it looks as if the weather will be entirely mild and welcoming. Thank goodness. We'll work on the Chinese-poet lesson I didn't get to teach last time, and maybe even possibly take ourselves outside to do some chalk writing.

Yesterday I edited all morning, then had a zoom meeting, then forced myself to go to mall-land to buy a new bedsheet and a bathroom rug. How I hate mall-land. Today, more of the same--that is, editing and a meeting; thankfully, I am done with the horrible shopping.

I'm feeling a bit queasy this morning, from a bad dream about babies, and am hoping that it wears off shortly. I've finished Lincoln in the Bardo and remain highly impressed with it, and now I'm reading Ali Smith's how to be both, which I haven't yet come to a decision about. My brain is all in a muddle: I've been doing so many things so quickly . . . editing planning four classes writing discussion questions for a video interview working on an essay making biscuits folding laundry more stuff that I've forgotten . . . Without that little Chicago respite I think I would be a pile of old rags.

Yesterday I hung clothes on the line, first outdoor laundry of the season, and T brought up the outdoor table and chairs from the cellar, and I set them up alongside the garden boxes, and the weather was windy and raw but the crocuses were blooming and we felt like spring.

Here are the little arugula speckles inside my cold frame, mixed in with the ubiquitous Norway maple samaras that will shortly be driving me crazy by sprouting everywhere. I never saw such an eager tree.

Here is an early-season shot of the Lane (if you are new to my little yard, all of its regions have names, courtesy of my younger son): cold frame in back, moveable row protector in front, arugula and spinach to come. You see how close our property is to the neighbor's. Everything I do outside, I do under a fish-eye lens. It's still very odd, after twenty-plus years in the woods, to be so public. But I'm getting used to it.

A shot of the Terrace and the Breadbasket: the contrast is poor because of the clouds, but on the far right maybe you can glimpse the pea trellis, cucumber trellis beside it, garden box with row cover, wintered-over spinach. Again, my cultivation space is smack up against my neighbor's property; you can also see how tightly it presses against the front sidewalk. It's a good thing all of my neighbors are so extremely nice.

Focus on spinach: I can't tell you how pleased I am it lasted through the winter, even through that subzero snap, without any protective cover (other than snow).

First wood hyacinth, tucked up against the stones in the Library Garden: frost-burnt leaves but bravely blooming nonetheless.

Another shot of the Breadbasket, and my very plain-faced house. Here you can see, from the left, the bean tower and the tomato stakes.

Everything in these photos looks like a stereotype of grim New England. We have to hunt hard for our beauties in March. In two months this space will be filled with vines and flowers, and the house will be less bleak. But it sure does look like a Frost poem now.

All evening and all night, rain and sleet and fat wet snowflakes. This morning, the world is brown and sopping and cold and early-spring magnificent . . . which is to say, none of that damn snow stuck, just as I'd predicted. Plus, my garden has been launched!

I spent a big chunk of yesterday arranging the vertical architecture: pounding in tomato stakes, setting bean and pea and cucumber trellises. It's way too early to plant most of these vegetables; but given my tiny space, I had to lay out the structure for the entire summer before I began sowing the first beds.

Once that was done, I moved forward into my first open-air planting. (I've already got arugula sprouting in the cold frame.) In the raised beds, under new row covers, I sowed spinach and chard. Around the uncovered edges I sowed more spinach and also radishes, and I planted peas along the zig-zags of the new compact pea trellis. This spring I'm working hard to increase vertical cultivation as I want to make room for a few in-ground potatoes. (I haven't had much luck with production in the potato bags.) I already do a lot of close planting, succession planting, interplanting; and a greater emphasis on trellising will significantly save space. I'll try to remember to take a picture today, to show you the bare bones of Garden 2023.

Miniature farming is extremely interesting, far more than I expected it to be when I moved here. In my front yard I've got excellent southern exposure and a longer growing season than I used to have, combined with city vulnerabilities (dogs, trash, highly compressed space, urban invasions: that stupid groundhog, those delinquent squirrels, the looming possibilities of rats and vandals and street construction, etc., etc.). Nonetheless, the project has a dollhouse fun: how can I transform a postage stamp into a thriving cottage and kitchen garden? As always, I am full of hope in the spring.

Already, I've brought some "harvests" into the house: a handful of green-onion sprouts, some wintered-over spinach. But it's March in Maine, and I don't have a greenhouse. I feel completely justified in crowing over my teeny-tiny crops.

I had a lovely sleep-in this morning, punctuated by a dream about my sister and a parade and a pesty baby bear and a turret full of chickens. (No chickens were murdered by bears in this dream; they merely flapped and squawked.)

Today, Saturday, hurray! I know we're supposed to get a skim of snow this evening, but I nonetheless plan to treat today as a gardening day. Yesterday I did a bunch of raking; today I'll finish that chore and start prepping garden beds for planting and setting up my new pea trellis. The snow will be insignificant, if it's even snow at all. I am feeling very confident in spring.

Yesterday was such a busy day . . . editing, of course, but also a phone meeting about an upcoming event, and I started outlining two different April classes, and I wrote a page of an amorphous essay about how time is addressed both within individual poems and over the arc of a poet's career. I am very, very pressed, work-wise. I know I'll have to work this weekend too--prepping for a video session, catching up on Donne, probably doing more class designing--but the garden is my number-one priority today. I need to get my hands into that dirt.

I do have some news to share with you. Maine's current poet laureate, Julia Bouwsma, is launching, along with the Maine Arts Commission and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, an endeavor called WriteME--a statewide project focusing on sharing epistolary poems: that is, poems that feel like personal letters. The idea is that people around Maine, poets and non-poets, will be matched to write to one another . . . sort of like poetic penpals.

To kick off the project, the administrators will be offering a series of free workshops in which interested people will learn more about what epistolary poems are and get a chance to write a few themselves. These workshops are open to anyone: you do not have to live in Maine. Anyone also includes teenagers, so if you have students, by all means encourage them to participate.

There will be five hour-and-a-half workshops offered in April: three live, and two on zoom. Richard Blanco and I will be teaching the zoom classes. Valerie Lawson, Maya Williams, and meg willing will be offering in-person workshops in various parts of the state. 

Remember: these are free and you don't need to know squat about writing poems. You just need to be excited and curious! I hope you can join us.