Finally, at 8 p.m. last night, Tom settled the new door into place--and just in time, as it's supposed to rain all day. Much work remains to be done (maybe for tomorrow's post I'll take a photo for you of the outside of the house, which still looks grim), but at least the indoor side is more or less finished, except for new trim, which will be the last stage of this complicated repair project. Yesterday evening neighbors kept stopping by to sympathetically tsk. The hideous vision has been hard to overlook. The hole in the house was stupendously ugly, and, yes, much of the structure seems to have been held together by expanding foam rather than solid wood. It did kind of look like the entrance to hell.

But back to the new door. That's the old door you see sitting next to it, a windowless block. So with these three new pebbled panes, the atmosphere of our living room has changed dramatically. I'm eager to see how the additional sunlight will affect, among other things, my houseplants. 

Today, I've got to do yet another round of housecleaning, but so it goes with construction projects . . . vacuuming, mopping, wiping down the new windows. Amid yesterday's cleanup, I managed to finish an editing task while still keeping my nose to the grindstone with the Sappho poems. I hauled cans to the returnable center and dropped off my absentee ballot and pondered the variable outcomes of romance in Greek myths.

This weekend I'll be away at the Belfast Poetry Festival; then, starting next week, Monson, a houseguest, rehearsals at Bowdoin, performing at the Word Festival in Blue Hill, more rehearsals, performing at Mechanics' Hall in Portland . . . These few days I've spent cleaning up after construction and trying to do what I can to take care of exhausted Tom have been comparatively restful, and though Sappho has chosen to interfere, her timing has been good.

Twenty-nine pages of poems so far. What is going on here?

We're still doorless, though Tom worked all day till dusk, hoping he'd be able to install it. I'm not surprised the job's taking so long: he's been replacing not only the rotted sill but also sections of rotted beams and joists. At one point he was jacking up the house. So many secrets lie beneath the skin of a building, all of them eager to disintegrate when you're not paying attention.

Unfortunately he doesn't have today off from work, so I'm not sure when he'll return to the task. Maybe in the evenings, he says, if he can come home a little early. Or maybe we'll be in limbo till next weekend. 

Meanwhile, the rains have moved in. Knowing they were imminent, I, too, tried to catch up on a few outside chores, among them repotting a couple of root-bound houseplants. But I was still distracted by the Sappho project. Though I wrote only two more poems, I spent quite a while poring over the rest of the manuscript, not with a revisionary eye, simply trying to attend to my burgeoning characters and situations. I don't know how to write a novel, but surely, as with poems, it must be important not to excise material too soon. Whatever-this-is-I'm-writing is some sort of poem-story mashup, and I don't want to slice up the fabric before I even know what it looks like.

Since Friday I have written nine new poems for my Sappho project (and started a tenth). Of course this overflow is thrilling me: I am always all-of-a-shiver when I'm in the zone. All day long yesterday, between planting garlic and tulips and lugging plywood for Tom, between hanging up laundry and taking it down again, between stripping the last peppers and tomatoes from the plants and simmering and straining green salsa for the freezer, I was crouched over my laptop, writing, writing, writing.

The draft is now 25 pages long . . . I can hardly believe how fast this story is pouring out of me. I don't know where it will end up, but something big is happening. I love my characters and their time and place, and my schtick of having to account for every single word of the Sappho fragment in every single poem has turned out to be compositional gold.

Now, on this chilly Sunday morning, I sit alone in my darkened living room, watching flames lick at the kindling in the stove. Various deconstruction issues, mostly involving rot, slowed Tom down yesterday, so instead of a new door, a sheet of plywood is plugging the hole. Today, he assures me, the door will be installed . . . not that I'm nagging. I know all about the unavoidable delays of repair.

Without a real door, this room is drafty, and I'm not too willing to turn on the furnace so that it can blast expensive hot air into the front yard. So thank goodness for this doughty wood stove, and for this hot cup of coffee, and for this thick red bathrobe. And for the warmth of my nine new poems.

When I'm in the zone, I'm mostly dazed. I feel dumber than usual. The words arrive fast; I can barely keep up with them, but I'm not exactly thinking. Almost, my attention is shunted to one side. I see what's happening but I'm not quite part of what's happening. I suppose there's a dream analogy to be made, except that I'm not enmeshed in illogic. This is imagination at ferocious work, I guess. Story snatches the reins, and fingers humbly perform their secretarial role.

I have no idea how long this aura will last. Maybe the burst is over for the moment, or maybe I'll write nine more poems today. Whatever happens, I was lucky; I was showered with jewels . . . which isn't to say that what I made is precious. The glitter was the act of making.

It's 42 degrees outside on this Saturday morning, and a new fire crackles in the wood stove. Our furnace problem has been fixed, but why waste oil when my basement is crammed with construction scraps? Tom has lugged home so much pine-board slag from work that I've barely needed to touch the actual firewood yet. Though pine is not ideal for real winter cold, at this time of year it's just right for taking the edge off the chill.

And the house will be open to the elements today because T will be ripping out the front door frame. If all goes well, by the end of the day we will have a brand-new, freshly painted, not-ugly weathertight door and storm door in place, with a solid sill beneath them. Of course this does mean that the Big Kitten will have to spend a few hours locked in the basement so he can't escape through the gaping maw, but I think he'll survive, though he will have his doubts.

Yesterday I went back to a writing project I think I mentioned to you a while ago--a linked story-in-poems, with each poem containing every word from one particular Sappho fragment. I wrote four new pieces and then went back through the draft as a whole to tweak language and story elements. The poems are set in the wartime 1940s, in an unnamed, semi-mythical, American provincial city. And because they are constrained by Sappho's word choice, the characters, too, are semi-mythical: a pair of working-class adult sisters caring for, and being controlled by, difficult parents who are enmeshed in the machinations of the Greek pantheon.

This has been very enjoyable project, not least because I've been able to come and go with it--work on it for a few days, let it lie for a few weeks--without losing the narrative or emotional threads . . . which isn't to say that I know where the tale is going. The story unrolls like a ball of yarn, and I am following the string. It's 17 pages long so far, almost chapbook length, and maybe that's what it will end up becoming. Or maybe it will be even longer. I'll let the story figure that out for itself.

Otherwise: today I'll plant garlic and tulip bulbs, start tearing out garden detritus, hang sheets on the outside lines. This will be my last weekend at home for a while, so I'll try to make the most of it.

Yesterday's jaunt to Bates turned out to be so pleasant. I spent an hour or so with a first-year class, whose assignment was to bring questions to class to ask me. Clearly, as good students, they tried to choose questions that would make their teacher happy. They were, on the whole, quite reminiscent of the kids I spent time with last month in Jersey City: career overachievers who had honed their ability to ace school. I recognize them: I went to Haverford, which is the same sort of college as Bates . . . though I personally had some serious gaps in my ability to ace school.

But at one moment yesterday, a change rippled the atmosphere. I'd been talking about a poem of mine that the class had been assigned to read: "Play Clothes," from Calendar. And I said casually, "I bet you all have a piece of clothing you remember loving to wear when you were young." Slowly, one student after another began piping up: the Sponge Bob shirt, the shirt with pink ladybugs . . . and then what they'd been doing while wearing these clothes . . . hugging a chinchilla, shooting their brother with a water pistol . . . It was poetry in action, that moment: these students suddenly saw that the detritus of life, our physical memory, holds intense emotion . . . saw that leading with things rather than abstractions is a way to tap into the depths.

It was a beautiful slippage.

Just a quick note this morning as I am heading out very early for my Bates College class. But for a moment I am paused here on the couch, listening to vague rain pattering against the dark windows. I hear Chuckie lapping up his breakfast; I hear the halting drip of the bathroom shower head and the cooling teakettle clicking on the kitchen stove. So many small sounds overlapping--a sort of aural fidget, a peaceable friction. And upstairs Tom sighing in his bed.

Today is my birthday, and I am celebrating with a cup of coffee and a daybreak fire in the wood stove. Outside it's 38 degrees, our coldest morning since last spring, and our new furnace is on the blink (sigh: probably a sensor issue but it should be under warranty and the guy is coming to repair it tomorrow), so starting a fire is simple common sense. Still, even in the woods, our stove always felt like such rich luxury. Yes, it was hard work to keep it stoked. Yes, it demanded constant attention. But sitting in a dark room watching golden flames lick at the maple logs, the soothing crackle and pop of pine kindling, stretching my hands out to the sweet warmth . . . that routine never gets stale.

So I'm 62 years old today--waking up in this little shabby house, in this little city by the sea, on this cold October morning. The day is mine, except for an evening zoom reading. My plan is to get onto my exercise mat, which I haven't done all summer; to go for a walk and return a library book; to deal with laundry and emails; and then read and write for the rest of the day. Nothing spectacular: just a bumble around alone in my own dear space.

Yesterday after work, I walked into find a sweet homemade card from Tom and Chuckie. Then, when T got home from work, he took me out to a a tiny Japanese restaurant where we sat at the bar and ate one exquisite mouthful of seafood after another. Tonight I'll make my own dinner, but that's pleasure too.

Every year my birthday reminds me of how much I love this world, despite all. The clean blue of an October sky. Wind gusting through dry leaves. The hop-skip of a silly black cat. The smile of friends who are glad to see me. Tom's knee pressed against mine. It's all so simple. It's all so tangled. I'm so glad to be here.