Another warmish morning, this time with a soaking rain on the horizon. The air is already full of moisture, and my hair, after reverting to winter straightness, has returned to its curly summer ways. I haven't lit the wood stove in three days, which feels so odd in November. And yet brief daylight, heaps of leaves on sidewalks, bare maples craning over houses: the streets of this little city are a portrait of late autumn.

Yesterday I sent off an editing sample to the author I'm working for, which means I'm on editing hiatus until he responds. So today will be full of this-n-thats: my exercise class at the Y, tidying up my study before I teach in it all weekend, talking with Teresa and Jeannie during our Poetry Lab zoom. I doubt I'll get any raking done outside, given the rainy forecast, but maybe.

I did go out to my writing group last night, and I did produce two so-called drafts, but since I finished Awake at the Olympus I haven't written a real poem. I shouldn't repine over that, but I do. Not writing makes me feel blank, no matter how busy I'm keeping myself, or how much I need a rest. Right now I'm not particularly tired or overwhelmed by other obligations. I could certainly fit a new poem project into the interstices, but no. I have reverted to once, long ago, last week, I was a poet. 

Yesterday's weather was bizarrely warm, and I think we've got a few more unseasonable days ahead before temperatures settle back into typical November. I opened windows upstairs and down, glad to have a chance to air out the fug that always settles into a closed-up house. 

After an insane October, I'm realigning into a more familiar work pattern: big editing project punctuated by teaching days. But I'm also looking forward to a bit of a respite. This weekend I'll be leading my next online Poetry Kitchen session, and then afterward T and Chuckie and I are going up to the cottage for our semiannual stay on Mount Desert Island. We'll be there longer than usual this time--for most of a week--and Chuck is coming with us, an adventure for all.

I'll probably do some editing while we're at the cottage, but I'm also hoping to think about chapbook organization, catch up with my Berryman reading, maybe step back from Awake at the Olympus and consider what I've actually made. But in fact none of this is crucial. I don't have a tight editing deadline, and if all I do is read murder mysteries and take naps at strange times of the day, well, then so be it.

Today, however, is a work day. I'll go for my walk, deal with laundry, edit, prep for the weekend class. Maybe I'll rake leaves or clear out garden beds. I'll pick up our CSA order and bake an orange cake for tonight's writing group. I like these days when I need to mix up brain work with housework. I like watching new daylight stain the night sky. I like listening to crows bark in the maples. I like knowing that T gets to sleep in a little this morning instead of rushing off into a long day of labor.

Here's some John Clare for you--crazy, confused, adoring John, that lonely Romantic, so obssessed with his landscape, the plants and animals. I wonder how he and William Blake would have gotten along, if they'd ever happened to meet.

Autumn

John Clare

The thistledown's flying, though the winds are all still,

On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,

The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;

Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot.

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,

The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.

The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,

And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.

Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,

And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run;

Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;

Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

Good morning, Americans! By which I mean holy shit!

What a rout! I can't decide if I feel more like an upside-down Labrador retriever scratching my back in spring grass or more like an exploding fountain of tears. After 30 years, Maine's red Senate seat has flipped blue. Susan Collins is gone. Hurray for Troy!

I'm relieved, but not surprised, that Hannah Pingree will be our next governor. Her mother Chellie Pingree was a solid shoo-in for first district U.S. Rep. But our second district situation is almost as amazing as the Senate flip: LePage and Dunlap look like they're headed for a run-off election. I never expected Dunlap to make a dent in the conservative towns, but he has been fully competitive.

And then there's Texas, and Kansas, and South Carolina . . . What a massive relief. It's dizzying.

Tonight Tom and I are going out to the movies to watch the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup. Hail Fredonia, pals! Here's to better times ahead!

It was a beautiful day for a drive north yesterday, and then last night I slept like a rock--and not like a small stone; more like a granite boulder. So I am waking up this morning with fresh air creeping through the open window and the sound of someone else lighting the stove and making coffee downstairs--a vacationy feeling, despite the fact that I have to hoick myself up and go to work.

Today my class will be focusing on details. We'll play with using them to swell and shrink drafts in various ways, and along the way I think I'll talk a little with them about what I've been doing with my recent Sappho-prompted project. I don't usually use my own work as an example, but sometimes it seems pertinent. What happens when you set yourself up for mystery? If nothing else, I hope these young people learn the glory of surprise.

Chuckie is so perplexed by the time change. At 3:30 a.m. he is licking my face and peering affectionately up my nose, convinced that now is the best of all possible times for breakfast. I honor his sweet temper and his youthful appetite, but oy. I fear this transition to Eastern Standard Time is going to be rocky for a while yet.

This afternoon I'll be driving up to Wellington, spending the night in the homeland so that I can teach in Monson on Tuesday. I bet the leaves are mostly gone from the trees up there, though when Gretchen and I drove down to Ogunquit yesterday, we noticed that far southern Maine trees are still very leafy. This is such a variable state, climate-wise.

Gretch and I went to look at the Carl Sprinchorn paintings at the Ogunquit Museum. It was the last day of that show, but the parallel show at Bates College is still up for a little longer, if you want to see his work. I think I mentioned in a previous post that Sprinchorn was a Swedish-born painter who spent a lot of time painting in the Monson and the Katahdin areas in the early part of the 20th century. It's been instructive to spend time with his sketches and finished pieces, especially in the midst of our performance focus. 

Otherwise, I dealt with home stuff yesterday--baking bread, washing kitchen shelves, putting away outdoor furniture--while Tom continued his door project: installing a moisture barrier where the stoop will abut the house, painting trim, carving out slots for the post-holders in the concrete footer. Now that the days have become shorter, there's even less daylight available, and paint dries slowly in cool weather. I can't imagine we'll have a stoop before the snow flies, but maybe I'm wrong.

This morning I'll go for my walk, deal with bathrooms and floors, prep for class, catch up with emails, stare at the poems in the new manuscript. I'm feeling pretty lively this morning, despite Chuck's attempts to reset the clock. It will be a fine day for a drive, to think about word repetition, to trudge through leaves, to mop a floor, to consider foreshadowing and suspense, to breathe cool air, to kiss my sweetheart, to warm my hands by the stove. I look forward to it all.

We got zero trick-or-treaters last night, which was not a surprise, given our unwelcoming front-door situation. I did make an attempt to encourage kids to the side door, but the light's not all that visible from the road, and the entry is tucked way down the driveway behind two vehicles and a pile of construction debris. So it's no wonder the kids didn't notice us-- though even on a good year, this end of the street doesn't attract a lot of trick-or-treaters. I don't know why, as the neighborhood looks like a stereotypical little-kid Halloween paradise.

Chuckie is very confused by the time change, so mixed up that he hasn't even been able to eat his breakfast. I agree with him: it is odd to be writing to you in daylight. Outside, the air is cold and still. November is upon us, with a sudden simplicity of sky and branch.

Yesterday I may have finished the Sappho project, which I am going to stop calling the Sappho project and refer to from now on by its actual title, Awake at the Olympus, thirty-nine pages of linked poems about a family that is both myth and flesh. Three people have read in-process versions of the draft so far, and one of them is my younger son. A kind of cinematic fairy tale, he tells me. Yes. My mind is filled with the imagery of noir movie sets, and yet, because of my language obligations (every poem contains every word, or a sonic imitator, of one particular Sappho fragment), I can't help but accept the mythic overtones.

For copyright reasons, I won't share the fragment translation here, but I can give you the eleven required words in alphabetical order:

arms

come

daughters

graces

here

like

of

pure

roses

with

Zeus

Some words, like of, are almost invisible in the poems. Some, like Zeus, are flashing lights every time they appear. Some, like pure, are trickily invasive. Yet on the whole these poems have not been a struggle to write, and that's because graces and roses immediately morphed into Grace and Rose, sisters who developed distinct characters and became my emotional through-line.

I don't quite know what to do with myself now, or what to do with this manuscript. I guess I'll do nothing, for the moment anyway. The past few months have been full of surprise, poem-wise. First there was that crown of sonnets. And now this. I wonder what will happen next.

Hey, I'm spending an entire weekend at home, and I'm not teaching or performing or anything! And so far Saturday is off to a great start: fire in the stove, coffee in my cup, Chuckie on the hearth rug, Tom fast asleep in bed.

I feel much livelier than I did yesterday at this time and am looking forward to dealing with a big batch of homestead stuff over the next two days: pruning and clearing in the garden, stowing outdoor furniture, washing down kitchen shelves, getting rid of construction dust, harvesting chard and kale. I'm also looking forward to reading and writing. Yesterday I was able to get back to the Sappho project and added three more poems to the manuscript. I'm still working my way through Dos Passos's U.S.A. and have made a small dent in Berryman's Dream Songs. I might watch the Bills play the Ravens tomorrow afternoon. I need to acquire some Halloween candy today and figure out how to direct kids away from the unusable front door to the less visible side door.

I could add a host of other this-and-thats as well; but though this to-do list may seem ambitious, it's really mostly puttering. In truth, I'm just looking forward to messing around with my own stuff, bumping shoulders with Tom as he messes around with his projects, greeting young Chuck as he interferes enthusiastically.

A sunny cool day in the little northern city by the sea. Blue sky. Half-bare trees. A bright wind.