It is a dim and blue Easter morning in the little northern city by the sea.

I am not a churchgoer, so during the hoohah of Holy Week I am always on the outside looking in. When we were younger, Easter was a child-centered holiday--colored eggs and baskets and meals. But without the boys at home, it feels a bit accidental . . . a religious holiday that I recognize intellectually but that has no personal resonance beyond nostalgia and the pagan riots of spring.

This year, for some reason, I have even been feeling a little resentful about the Christian overtones of Easter: a little twitchy about tales of prayer and ritual; a little impatient with people's needs to publicly exhort and expiate. I do get weary of the emotional trappings. I start to feel as if I'm fighting my way out of a bag of wool. This is unkind and unreasonable of me, a teenage-style grumpiness; and to those of you who are believers, I apologize for my cranky agnosticism. I am happy for you. But, for whatever reason, I cannot endure organized religion, neither its comforts nor its cruelties.

Still, I love many of the things that Christianity has nurtured: Bach and the mystery plays and the scent of Easter lilies in a cold room. And T and I are together, and it is spring, and that is a good-enough reason for a holiday. This morning I'll marinate a leg of lamb in yogurt, oregano, and cardamom. I'll make lemon custards and a raspberry coulis. This afternoon I'll listen to my first Red Sox game of the new season. In between, I'll sit in my study and read the poems of George Herbert, the poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poems of Richard Wright. In between, T and I will walk out into the brisk spring day--a day of wind and crocuses, a day of whitecaps and gulls.

Finally, after days of rain and snow and ice and rain, we've got a sunny day in the forecast. I expect the ground will be too saturated for actual gardening, but at least I can get outside to pick up sticks and branches from the ice storm and soak in some spring air.

I'm behind on housework and groceries because I had to spend yesterday in the basement ballroom of the Holiday Inn hawking the wares of Monson Arts to members of the Maine Council on English Language Arts. But it turned out to be a pretty useful day: not just spreading the word about the conference among teachers but also confabulating with various teaching poets and writing organizations about how we can best work together with our resources to support literary education in the state. There's a notable lack of territorial defensiveness among the people doing this work. Partly that's because Maine is huge, so there's plenty of geographical need for all of us. Partly that's because our organizations have varied approaches to writing with young people, and that variety is useful and necessary. Probably next year I ought to do a presentation at this conference, not just sit behind a table. But that's a decision for another day.

I didn't expect to run into so many colleagues. I still tend to think of myself as a lone poet-wolf prowling around the edges of town. But that's not true. To be sure, Monson Arts isn't very well known among teachers around the state. This is the big reason we decided to set up a table at the conference: to promote ourselves as an educational resource. But all of the work I've done independently and through organizations such as the Telling Room, the Frost Place, and Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance has accrued. Yesterday I kept surprising myself. Who knew that I would be the person who kept saying, "Hey, I'd like you to meet . . . "? Who knew that the state poet laureate would launch herself across the room to give me a hug and say, "Dawn, I need to talk to you about this idea I have for a teaching project. . . . "? I always think I hate these kinds of events. I always think I hate the word networking. But that, in fact, was what yesterday was about. And it was not only useful but joyful.

When you're committed to the moral righteousness of your mission, networking and marketing are a whole lot less terrible. This sounds like such a pompous thing to claim, but it's true. I believe wholeheartedly in the value of the work I do with young people and with teachers, so why not forthrightly say so? It's not like I'm a snake-oil salesman. Still, publicity is always a challenge for me. I constantly fight against my engrained instincts: "extinguish your light," "don't show off so much."

At the same time, our educational team at Monson Arts is in an enviable position. This winter we were awarded significant funding for our high school studio programming--enough to keep us going for up four more years, if we receive some matching grants. Not only can we maintain our current programs, but we will able to do outreach work in schools, hire guest artists to extend our network, bring in teams from other arts organizations . . . The possibilities are vast, and the question now is how do we make best use of these resources? how do we best serve students, teachers, schools, and teaching artists, in the short term and in the long run?

I've never had this luxury before. Even in organizations with established reputations, our big dreams constantly collided with no budget. Yet luxury is daunting in its own way. Monson Arts has resources. We have a mission. We are also faced with various coiling tangles: idealism about art versus local indifference to art; students who long for opportunities versus students who scoff at opportunities; teachers who value artists as partners versus teachers who are suspicious about our intentions; administrators who want to foster connections with our programs versus administrators who could care less about the arts. And then there's the giant geographical challenge.

Still, it's an enviable problem. And it's exciting to imagine the future. I'm almost sixty years old, and I have to be realistic about how long I'll be playing a part in this story. I hope, though, I can help figure out a few things for the next person who comes along.

 It's still pouring rain out there, and I'll be rushing out the door into the morning . . . first to haul the trash to the curb, then to drive across town to help staff the Monson Arts table at the Maine Council of English Language Arts convention. I used to staff book-fair tables for CavanKerry Press, so I know how this works, but I'm not naturally good at face-to-face sales chatter, and I fear the day will be long. However, I will grit my teeth and do my part for my program. At least I don't have to drive far.

Otherwise, what's new? Editing, housework, trying to get things arranged for our upcoming travels . . . cat sitting, eclipse glasses, meal plans. This will be a working trip for me--I'll be teaching in Monson and editing in West Tremont--but Tom will have a real week off and is arranging to spend some of it on a photo project, so he's figuring out his parallel itinerary.

Our twice-yearly travels to Mount Desert Island have been really good for Tom and me. We get to spend time with a dear friend and help her out with things in the house and garden. We get to live in a little cottage we love, beside a little cove we love. We don't have to spend money we don't have. But also, because everything is familiar and regular, our daily lives can slip into this world comfortably. I find it easy to work in the cottage: I don't feel the pressure to be on vacation, to manufacture fun. And yet my sleeping and waking schedules relax, even as I putter through my obligations. And when I can step away from that work, Acadia is waiting.

The snow was waist-high in Monson, but by the time I got home yesterday, the accumulation in Portland had mostly vanished--just plow leftovers and shady corners--and the crocuses were blooming brightly. Now we've got two days of rain ahead of us, and the grass will keep greening and the buds will keep swelling, and by Saturday the city will have returned to spring.

My high school season is nearly over: just two more classes in April, then students' gallery opening in May, and we'll be done till September. It's been a very good year. I've learned a lot about organizing a progression of writing experiences, and I feel as if if the kids have stepped confidently into their final projects. They've put so much work into their writing, but I also don't feel any panic from them, and that's a good thing.

Today I'll be back at my desk, back at my housework. Probably I'll go out to write tonight. Probably I'll go for a walk in the rain. My sprained ankle is still bothering me a little, but at this point walking actually seems to help it. I hope I can get it back into shape before we go to Acadia in two weeks. Otherwise, my hiking hopes will be shot.

***

Fledgling

Dawn Potter

 

Once I was a child

ashamed of my small delights,

picking my nose secretly under the rhododendrons

 

as the scent of spring earth and old cement

spread like the chill breath of the underworld.

Ghosts shimmered on the broken doorstep,

 

rising through dust to become my own new skin.

I did not imagine a world without ghosts—

nor the end of wonder, dust swept away.

[from Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]

Spent last night dreaming about teaching, and now I have woken up to a day of teaching, and it's annoying to have already done such a bad job of it in my sleep. My dream brain would like you to know that I am a terrible classroom manager, can't stay on topic, forget the names of my students, have no useful goals, and am constantly overwrought. Hire me, please. I guarantee uproar.

I'm staying in lodgings I've never stayed in before. This time, for some reason, the management gave me an entire house to myself, and I feel like a pea rattling around in a barrel. Outside, the passing cars hiss over the wet road. The drive north was sloppy and nerve-racking--drizzle, with temperatures hovering around freezing for two-thirds of the route. But I arrived without incident, into this land of three-foot snow drifts, and now I am staring across the street into the construction site where the gas station stood two weeks ago, wondering why it has vanished. Ah, the mysteries of life.

Today my class will be whittling away at their final projects, messing around with stanza breaks and line breaks, paragraph breaks and sentence lengths. Meanwhile, snowmelt will dribble from the eaves, and grumpy robins will peck in the plowed driveways.

Lots of people are still without power today. Schools have stayed closed, traffic lights are dead at major intersections . . . We're so lucky that our own outage was relatively brief, but the ice storm did a number on the city and its surrounds.

Today I'll leave the icy metropolis and head north into snow country. Monson got roughly two feet from the last pair of blizzards, a classic turn of events in a central Maine spring. But the temperatures will warm quickly and the melt will commence. Already, my doughty tulips are peeking out from under the ice crust. They will not be quenched.

This week I'll be on the road for only one night; and only teaching my usual kids, not making any school visits--a much easier schedule than my last trip up north. My school-year travels are winding down: just a couple of classes left in April, then the kids' gallery opening, and I am done for the season. I do have a busy spring and summer ahead--a trip to the cottage on Mount Desert Island, weekend Zoom classes, a trip to Chicago, a trip to Vermont, co-teaching some teacher-training sessions, and then directing the big teaching conference in July--but my bi-weekly treks will be over until September.

Sometimes it amazes me, how much time I spend on the road these days. I am not the traveling sort; I struggle with transitions; I cling to habits. And yet here I am, heading toward the horizon once again.

What an ice storm! The city was a glittering ice rink, and every tree looked like a crystal chandelier. But there were power lines down all over the place, trees in the road, traffic lights out . . . a mess.

We're lucky to have our little wood stove. It doesn't heat the whole house, but it keeps the living room cozy. And yesterday I learned that, in a pinch, I could do some basic cooking on it: heat water, make frying-pan toast. The other thing I learned is that our freezer is very well insulated. Even after close to twelve hours without power, the sorbet held its texture perfectly, and the frozen meat stayed rock-hard.

Long power outages were a fact of life in Harmony, but this was our longest outage in Portland, and I had no idea how our infrastructure would hold up. In Harmony, we had no water but we had ample heat and a gas range we could light with a match. Here the water still runs when the power's out, but we have limited heat and no cookstove. Hurdles to clamber over, either way.

Fortunately, this time we didn't have to do too much clambering. Early in the morning, Tom managed to dig out his truck, and we skated across town to a diner for coffee and a hot breakfast. By the time we got home, our electricity was back on, and the house was back to normal. But lots of people in the city are still out.

***

This is an on-the-road week for me. Tomorrow I'll head north, to teach on Wednesday; and on Friday I'll need to help staff the Monson Arts table at the annual Maine English teachers' convention. (Fortunately for me it's in Portland.) In between I'll start a new big editing project and work on conference planning. I'm also hoping I can get back to my walking schedule. My injured ankle has been a drag; and though it's definitely mending, I'm not sure if it's ready for three-mile hike, especially given the ice. I hate not walking, though. Walks are such a good way to figure things out: to talk to myself, mull over poems or problems, but also to get outside of my own head into the world of birds and road grit and fire engines and dogs and middle schoolers loudly confabbing as they scuttle off to school.