It's muggy and dim this morning, and the cicadas in the apartment's handkerchief-sized backyard are operatic. The city is warmer than I thought it would be when I was home in autumnal Maine: summery and sticky, not a hint of chill in the air.

Thus far the visit has been relentlessly social, as I knew it would be. So I'm glad to be able to start off today slowly. I will meet Tom at the bus stop around 12:30, but till then the hours are my own. My plan is to get out of this bed whenever I happen to get out of it: shower, go find some coffee and a bagel, and then come back to the apartment and work on poems until I need to leave for Manhattan.

Yesterday's classes in Jersey City were fun--each an entirely different teaching experience, so that was great practice for me. The first was a largish AP Lit class, composed of the kinds of kids who usually sign up for such classes: a few serious literature lovers but mostly students who are pragmatic about its usefulness on college applications. These kids are primed for analysis, and I had only 50 minutes to surprise them into engaging as makers first, examiners second. So I dictated a Celan poem and gave them a writing prompt; then they read aloud a Sexton poem, and I gave them another prompt. After each writing prompt I then had them go back to the poem under discussion and engage with it . . . but asking them to make their own drafts between reading the model and talking about the model--creating a gap that belonged solely to them--felt very exciting. No one shared work. I did give them the opportunity but didn't expect them to take it. Not only was I new to them, but the class itself was unknown territory: they've only been in school for a couple of days. They have no trust-comfort yet, and I wasn't about to push them into that space. But I know they wrote, and I know they thought about what they wrote. I could see that in their eyes; I could hear it in their subsequent responses to the model poems; I could see that they were surprised.

The second class wasn't so much a class as a conversation with three serious student poets who wanted to share their work with me. Again, we only had 50 minutes, but we listened to work, reacted to it, talked about next steps, they asked me questions . . . They were eager and sweet and lovely to spend time with, and their work was strong and exciting.

This is a big urban high school, the city's academic magnet institution. These kids are all college-bound, many for Ivies and Little Ivies. I went to a Little Ivy myself, so I recognize the signs. No matter what worries lie below--about class status, racial discrimination, family situations--these kids understand that they are expected to succeed at a very high level. In that way they are entirely different from my central Mainers, yet young people everywhere are so dear, so obstinate, so open, such liars, such clowns, so fragile, so sturdy, so full of pulsing energy and lethargy. I am endlessly moved and frustrated and entertained by them.

On the train ride back to Brooklyn I was surrounded by a pack of middle school boys who accidentally clanked their water bottles on people's knees and spilled Chex Mix all over the place and had no idea where their feet were. My eyes filled; these children were so . . . themselves. I don't know why I am such a sucker for the awkward, idiotic charm of youth. But I do love it.

Good morning from Brooklyn, where I am getting ready to roust myself into my work day. So far the weather here has been cloudy and warm--not hot, but more summery than Maine has felt lately--and last night, when Steve, Paul, Lily, and I were walking through Gowanus, I found myself imagining what the place must have smelled like fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago. The dense pong of urban life: it must have been almost intolerable. Sanitation is one of the great boons of the modern world.

In a few minutes I'll get into the shower, get dressed, get out the door--heading first over to Paul's for breakfast, then to Jersey City to teach. I'm a bit apprehensive about teaching, but then I always am. I know I'm decent at the job, but that doesn't mean I'm relaxed about it. Teaching is a performance, and a performance keys me up.

Greetings from the bus, which is still lingering at the terminal, waiting for one final straggler. It's quite underfilled--only a few of us heading to the city this morning. And now the door sighs shut, and now the driver buckles his seatbelt and the safety video intones and the lights dim and we are on our way.

The sky is gorgeous this morning: clear blue striped with dense yellow-gray cloud. It's a fine day for a voyage. We lucked out: a non-bumpy bus, which is not always the case. The movie appears to be about French cats.

I need to work this morning--I've got a poetry collection to copyedit and a couple of poem drafts to revise before I email them to my Poetry Lab compadres. I ought to think a little more about the classes I'll be teaching tomorrow. I spend so much time with rural kids that a dip back into the world of urban teenagers will be a useful lesson. And I daresay I will do something dumb, which is always instructive.

Otherwise, I've got a novel to entertain me (James McBride's Deacon King Kong, loaned by my friend Gretchen) and a ham-and-gorgonzola sandwich to enjoy and I am glad I decided to wear socks and sweater on this bus because it's chilly in here. Compared to last week's train odysseys, this 6-hour trip is a skip and a jump. I might even nap through the whole thing.

The bathrooms are clean, the floors are washed, the sheets are changed. Ugh, housework, the never-ending chore. But anyway I'm caught up for the moment, till next Monday anyway. Which means that today is desk- and yardwork day. On Thursday afternoon I'll be teaching a class for my friend Holly at a high school in Jersey City, so I need to keep prepping for that, and I hope to finish a batch of editing today as well. I should pull out the trimmer and deal with the straggly crabgrass; I should deadhead flowers. I ought to pack, and I should make a don't-forget list for Tom who will be holding my fort till Friday, and I need to figure out where I can store my suitcase temporarily while I'm cruising around Manhattan tomorrow afternoon. I have to learn how to get to the Morgan Library from Grand Central Station and estimate when I might arrive so I can meet Jeannie at the door. I need to remember to text Steve so we can converge in Brooklyn later in the afternoon. And no doubt I'll be peppered with texts all day from my son Paul, who is one of those mysterious kids who appears to love to hang out with his parents. Where are you? Where are you going? Wait for me.

A voyage to New York is always a social maelstrom, though at the same time I am constantly traveling through the city alone, trying to converge with this person or that person at this time or that. Subways and streets are a web of solitaries.

I have one job obligation--Thursday's jaunt to Jersey City--but otherwise this is a friends-and-family venture: the Morgan tomorrow with Jeannie to look at Ashbery drawings and Peter Hujar photographs; embracing Tom at the bus stop on Friday and then going to the Cloisters on Friday with him and Paul to look at the Bat Lord, a Zapotec clay sculpture made between 800 and 900, and the unicorn tapestries because we all adore them; then meeting our Lily's mother and stepfather on Saturday and going to Broadway with them to see Shmigadoon, which is not exactly our style of show but we are determined to have fun because NEW YORK and BROADWAY and BRIGHT LIGHTS and we love our Lily.

Visiting Chicago and New York City in the same week is a ridiculous schedule, but ridiculous schedule is my new middle name, and why not embrace it? 

Yesterday was kitchen day, as this photo attests. From left to right: pizza dough rising, a peach cobbler cooling, and five jars of peppers waiting to be labeled, then stowed on the pantry shelves. Not seen: three quarts of sliced frozen peaches, three quarts of diced frozen peppers. It was a giant undertaking, hogging up counters and stove so that Tom could barely find room to make breakfast for himself; featuring all of the household's biggest pots, pans, and colanders; requiring me to empty the compost pail three times before noon; and leaving me with a cramped right hand (peeling two bushels of peaches is not a restful task). But the end results were highly satisfying. Those canned peppers are the prettiest food I've made in quite a while, and they will be a delight this winter alongside roast chicken or pot-au-feu. And while  Maine peaches are the thin, sour cousins of those golden southern beauties, they still cook up handsomely. I may not want to eat them out of hand, but they will make a fine February cobbler.

Altogether this weekend was shockingly productive. On Saturday, before my reading, I even managed to vacuum my car . . . not that I'm driving it much at the moment. Mostly I cleaned it for reasons of wistfulness, and the possibly vain hope that my new vehicle won't devolve into a construction truck when I'm not looking. Loan a car to a carpenter and expect sawdust on the seats and boxes of screws on the floor. Sigh.

Now here we are, back at Monday again, and I need to do my weekly housework, work on my editing project, start prepping for next week's first Monson class. Early on Wednesday morning I'll leave for NYC: it's hard to believe I'll be on the road again so soon, but so goes my new life. I feel lucky to have had such a kitcheny Sunday. I feel lucky to have been able to read poems in the midst of this homestead whirl. I feel lucky to be visiting my two favorite sons in my two favorite cities. The breathlessness can be part of the pleasure, though sometimes I forget that.

At yesterday's reading I brought my crown of sonnets, "The Dead," into the air for the first time. Always, with poems, I hope that I've written something that can hold listeners' attention. But a long poem or sequence is particularly tricky. This has to do with more than maintaining audience focus over many pages. Performing a long poem has to draw those present into emotional communion. I'm struggling to describe what I mean, but when a long poem works in the air I have the sense that the room has become a fragile shell, that each listener is aware of the delicate walls, the currents of feeling, and that all are complicit in keeping this shell intact.

I think this happened with "The Dead" yesterday. And as a result I've been experiencing what usually ensues on such occasions--a postpartum exhaustion . . . not weary in body, but as if some inner reserve has been emptied and washed clean. A stripping-down of the spirit. Even all of these hours later my arms feel heavy, my thoughts slow. Reading those sonnets in public enacted a communal loss. Afterward, people needed to tell me about their own dead. In a way I felt like a sin-eater, responsible for that old ritual task common in Welsh and other Celtic cultures: reading the poem aloud was a way to absolve souls.

What fantastic sleeping weather! It was 49 degrees when I woke up today in the little northern city by the sea, such a treat for a slow Saturday morning. Chuckie finally nagged me into getting up at 6 a.m., but I could have wallowed longer.

Autumn is in the air and I am not sorry. Ah, wood stove, couch blankets, hot cups of tea, the beautiful creeping in of the evening. I love to be snug. Of course there are summer elegies--flowers, ripe tomatoes, bare feet, swimming in a warm pond. But the garden is tiring, and I am ready to let it fade.

Yesterday, after I finished up at my desk, I emptied most of the potted flowers onto the compost heap. It's so extremely dry here, and it's been impossible to keep up with the watering, given my road schedule. A few of the potted plants remain, but only the sturdiest. I also took down the backyard hammock and brought in the hummingbird feeder. It's time to accept that summer is on its way out.

Still, I've got so much harvest produce to deal with. This morning, before I head out for my reading, I'll grind down another batch of basil for the freezer, and maybe work on some parsley as well. I may even have time to string hot peppers . . . they're already washed and waiting; all I need to do is dig out my needle and thread. Tomorrow I'll can pickled peppers and chop up the rest for the freezer. And maybe those bags of peaches will also be ripe enough to process.

Meanwhile, I did draft a poem yesterday, and I started putting together a table of contents for the chapbook, and I copyedited 50 or so pages of a novel. I proposed a topic for a class I'm contracted to teach next month, and did some scheduling, and responded to various emails, and read Ruth Moore's Spoonhandle, which I'm enjoying a great deal.

This afternoon I'll be reading around the corner in Yarmouth. If you're local, and in the mood for words, stop by and give me a hug--