I woke to rain, and now I sit under lamplight listening to drops tick the panes, tap the vents--a steady unsteadiness, regular yet irregular, and this is one of the beauties of water, I think. Whether in torrent, in tides, in speckled rain, it is forever the same, forever different.

Today is Easter, but if you're not a churchgoer and you don't have kids at home or family nearby, the holiday is easy to elide. My son, who is a parishioner at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn (Whitman was there, Lincoln was there, Beecher was there!), likes to tell me about his Lent and Holy Week obligations during our phone calls. For him, Easter is the culmination of an annual drama: the slow rising action toward a pinnacle of sorrow; then the denouement of release. It is a good tale, well paced, emotionally rapt. I'm glad it has mattered to people for so long, very glad it matters so much to him.

Yet Easter as festivity has sloughed away from me. No colored eggs or baskets these days; no big hot cross bun breakfasts or ham dinners. I will roast a chicken tonight, but I often do that on a wet Sunday evening. Mostly, today, I'll just be happy to be home and not in the headlines.

Yesterday was a continuance of crazy, albeit in a different mode. People saw the laureate announcement on the local news, in the local papers, on social media. My house is filled with flowers from friends and neighbors. My phone has (metaphorically) swelled like a tick, gorged with texts and emails. Maine makes such a to-do about the laureateship: it's startling. But people's minds will be elsewhere today, and I will sink back into obscurity . . . return to being a poet who mops floors and cleans out garden beds and peels potatoes and now and again considers a word.

So. This is the news. I've been named the next poet laureate of Maine.

I went up to Augusta yesterday, where Governor Janet Mills formally introduced me at the state's annual poetry month celebration. I stood in the Hall of Flags in the Maine Capitol. I was hugged by the governor. There was a standing ovation. I had to give interviews to the press. I have never in my life been in such a situation. As you can see, the experience has made my sentences choppy. The afternoon was hallucinatory, and I kept thinking I was in the wrong dream.

What can I say? Of course I am so happy and excited, equally nervous and impostery, also sure that I've bitten off way more than I can chew. And there's sorrow too--that Baron isn't here to know, that Ray isn't here to know: those two beloveds who, in such different ways, needled me into my life.

My five-year term doesn't officially begin until July, but I'll be busy before then, confabbing with Julia, our outgoing laureate, trying to find my footing in this more public realm.

And I can't help but think of my first years here in Maine: when I was laden with babies and homestead, when the poems first began to announce themselves. The governor read one of my poems at the event, and of all of them she chose this: my Maine origin story. It was happenstance, yet I woke this morning feeling as if I'd received a message from myself.

Home

 

So wild it was when we first settled here.

Spruce roots invaded the cellar like thieves.

Skunks bred on the doorstep, cluster flies jeered.

Ice-melt dripped shingles and screws from the eaves.

We slept by the stove, we ate meals with our hands.

At dusk we heard gunshots, and wind and guitars.

We imagined a house with a faucet that ran

From a well that held water. We canvassed the stars.

If love is an island, what map was our hovel?

Dogs howled on the mainland, our cliff washed away.

We hunted for clues with a broken-backed shovel.

We drank all the wine, night dwindled to grey.

When we left, a flat sunrise was threatening snow,

But the frost heaves were deep. We had to drive slow.

[from Same Old Story (CavanKerry Press, 2014)] 

 

Today I'm driving up to Augusta for a big poetry celebration at the state house. I expect the day to be overwhelming, but maybe that's just the introvert talking. Certainly there will be lots of readers, lots of dignitaries, and of course I am fretting over my outfit.

April, National Poetry Month, is always unpredictable. Sometimes I have a packed schedule; sometimes nothing. This round is suddenly shaping up to be busy, but then again the entire winter has been a frenzy, so what's new?

I don't know how other states function, but Maine makes much of poetry . . . partly because our current governor is a poet, but that's not the only reason. Poetry--at least the idea of poetry--just seems to be part of the ritual zeitgeist. It's a big state with a small population, yet poets are a significant demographic in the arts. And as became clear a couple of weeks ago, when I was speaking to teachers at the MCELA conference in Bangor, poetry also symbolizes a yearning, an emotional longing. Whether or not a person regularly writes or reads poems, the notion of poetry can be powerful.

Why, among all of the other literary genres, does poetry carry this particular aegis? We are a society of prose readers, if we read at all. Poetry is embarrassing and mysterious. It has no monetary value. Yet it continues to stand on its quiet hill.

Well, I'm home again, and glad to be here. Five nights at in my own bed, until Monday, when I head north again to Monson. At this point, such a long run of home nights feels like a miracle.

Today I'll be at my desk, working on class plans. I'll go for a walk, and wash sheets, and collect our CSA order, and bake a batch of brownies, and in the evening go out to write with my friends. Tomorrow afternoon I'll need to drive to Augusta for a poetry event at the statehouse. But this weekend, I hope, I'll be gardening.

Crocuses are up; scylla and primroses are beginning to bloom; last season's kale is unfolding new leaves. I cut a handful of chives for last night's dinner. I need to rake and pick up sticks and prep the garden boxes and figure out groundhog barriers and plant some seeds. I ought to take my mower to the hardware store to get the blades sharpened. I feel very behindhand with yard work, but one needs to be home and underemployed to make a head start, and that has not been my fate.

So it is pleasant to be sitting idly for these few minutes in my couch corner, alongside Big Chuck, who is happily filled with breakfast and curls sociably against my leg. I do have to work today, but at my own pace. Tomorrow will be chaotic. The weekend may be wet. All I can do is thread myself into whatever comes.

Just a quick note, as I've got to pull myself together for the roadtrip back to Portland. But it's never too late to be surprised by one's parents. Turns out my mom has a small crush on 1980s-era Cher and Nicolas Cage. She said, "Let's watch Moonstruck," so we sat around eating ice cream sandwiches and gazing at pretend Italian-Americans in pretend New York City fall in love to the soundtrack of La Boheme. 

It was a pretty good evening.

The forecast for Vermont today is 100 percent rain, but it's still too dark for me to glimpse the actual state of things outside. Yesterday, though, was quite warm, and on a brief walk I found a blooming hellebore and clusters of daffodils budding in the shelter of the house. A day of rain will surely start greening the fields.

The landscape of the Champlain Valley is not my personal ideal of beauty. I prefer forests to farmland, and this is a highly domesticated region. But watching a meadow transform from winter into spring is always a delight.

Today I'll be cooking, cleaning, carrying firewood, doing whatever needs to be done--or rather the edges of whatever needs to be done because there's no way to add anything more than a slight gloss to a situation that's never going to be under control.

Outside rain will fall, and the fields will become ponds that shimmer under a heavy sky.

And now here we are at Monday again, and I am girding myself for the long drive west.

In good news, I'm feeling much healthier: yesterday morning I dragged the vacuum cleaner around the house and in the afternoon pruned my roses, without ill effect from either. So while I'll probably stiffen up in the car, I don't think I'll be crawling out of it in agony the way I was last Wednesday.

The timing isn't bad for this trip to Vermont. The weather looks passable; and though crossing the mountains can always be dicey, I'll avoid the summer shortcut and stay on the big roads. Work is in a manageable state: all editing projects are off my desk, and nothing new has yet arrived.  I do have to prep for my high schoolers, but I can mess with that while my parents are resting. The big issue is "oh, do I have to leave home yet again?" but that is an old familiar plaint. I don't know if I'll ever get used to being on the road so much.

Maybe I'll expand my new Poetry Kitchen idea while my parents are napping. Maybe I'll work on a poem. Maybe I'll just stare out the window at eager birds crowding the feeder.