It's 36 degrees outside, and a fire is catching in the wood stove. Chuckie is filled with breakfast, Tom is in bed nursing a cup of coffee, and I am deliberately celebrating these few minutes in front of the fire before I have to hoick myself forward into another travel day. This morning's docket: off to the Y for a class, and then home to make up the guest bed and tidy the back room so that it's ready for tomorrow evening, when one of my dear Harmony friends swoops briefly into town.

This month is crammed with event, but at least I've been able to make good use of the off days to resettle myself. Yesterday I did the housework and shopping and in the afternoon even made some progress on garden cleanup: tearing out frosted plants and, most importantly, digging up dahlia tubers for winter storage. Our yard is currently a construction site, stacked with materials and detritus, so clearing out the garden isn't helping anything aesthetically. Still, focusing on home stuff settles my mind. Somehow charging back out onto the road is easier when I know that the floors are mopped, the dahlias are safe for the winter, the woodboxes and kindling baskets are full and waiting.

I haven't forgotten the Sappho project, but it's had to take a backseat for a few days. I'm not exactly out of the zone, but I am out of time to be in the zone. During some quiet moments in Belfast I did add a couple of new drafts, but neither is finished yet. I'm beginning to feel that the poems are arcing toward an ending, though I don't know what that ending will be yet. Maybe I'll work on the project in Monson tonight, or maybe I won't. Usually I don't write well in the evenings. As this choppily written paragraph makes clear, I don't know what my brain will demand of me, or when. And there's no rush. The story simmers.

Home again, briefly, which means that today has to be rushing-around-with-chores day: weekly housework, groceries, catching up with emails; and if there's any time left over from all of that, I'll start tearing frosted plants out of the garden. Tomorrow I'll head north for an overnight in Monson, so I need to make the most of this drop-in visit to my own domain. I would love to also do a little bit of nothing much. It's hard to figure out how, though.

The Belfast jaunt went well: a packed reading on Saturday night and a full workshop the next morning. Apparently lots of people come to this festival from faraway places; I had poets from NYC and even Toronto in my workshop. I imagine that the midcoast's summer-house culture partly accounts for that, but still it seemed notable.

Meanwhile, Tom worked on his house project all weekend, and at the same time a huge roofing crew was replacing the neighbors' three roofs, so our corner of the world was saws and hammering and ropes and shouts and the roofers' kids playing with rakes in the grass and eating doughnuts in the back of the truck.

Now our front door sports fresh exterior trim and new wiring for lights and doorbell, and there's non-water-damaged plywood sheathing surrounding it, and before long we might even have siding and a storm door, and someday even a stoop. All hail the handyman.

A quick good morning from Belfast, Maine, because I don't have wifi here and I don't want to use too much phone data. But here are some Coast Guard boats and blue skies for you to enjoy until we meet again.

Coffee and a crackling fire and even a small sleep-in until Chuckie got fed up with that: it's nice to have a slow Saturday morning before the weekend busyness barges in.

This morning I've got various things to do, not least figuring out what poems to read tonight. And after lunch I'll drive up to the coast to the Belfast Poetry Festival, where I'll be appearing as the keynote poet (6:30 p.m. at the UU church) and then leading a generative workshop tomorrow morning (10 a.m. at the Rockweed Center). There may or may not be spaces left in the workshop; I'm not sure, but check that out if you're in the area and in the mood.

Yesterday turned out to be unexpectedly busy. The strength and balance class at the Y was good, and felt very useful, so now I need to figure out if I can afford to take it regularly. Then dance rehearsal was a reminder of rhythm and body attention. I spent hours away from words, after a week of word frenzy, and I think that may have been a good thing. I was still thinking about my poems; I talked about them with Gretchen; I wondered what they were and would become. But a little separation was tonic.

This morning I feel energetic and well rested, reasonably ready to cross the line from introverted obsessor to public poet. I'm still learning this new way of work, but I'm sort of getting there. I hope.

This morning I'll be up and out early--first, going over to the Y with some friends to try a strength and balance class, then driving up to Bowdoin to start rehearsing for the upcoming Monson, Maine, USA performances. Teresa won't fly in until the middle of next week, but the rest of us are going to try to get a head start on resurrecting the dances.

So it will be a busy-in-sweatpants kind of day and also a chance to wean myself from the Sappho project before I head up the coast for the poetry festival tomorrow. I've been lucky to have so many hours this week to devote to writing poems, but any further progress will have to leak in around the edges of obligation.

At last night's writing group I wrote a draft completely unrelated to the Sappho poems that nonetheless felt like it had potential. Apparently whatever is smoldering in my brain isn't limited to the one obsession but is branching into other themes and details as well. Maybe it will also filter through all of these upcoming performances and readings and workshops. It is nice to imagine that writing fluidly might lead to dancing fluidly, but I have my doubts.

Last night Tom stripped off the painters' tape and installed the door knob and the lock, a task that looks like it should take five minutes but actually takes much longer and requires considerable sighing and finagling. So (from inside the house) the door is now lovely, though in need of a good window washing. I look forward to today's sunshine.

So far it's a cool morning here in the little northern city by the sea, with temperatures forecast to hover in the 50s. A fire crackles in the stove. Chuckie blinks contentedly. The Dodgers are in danger of being swept by the Brewers. All in all, a good start to the day.

I've reached 32 pages in my Sappho project. I don't know where this story is coming from, but then I never know much when I'm in the midst. Writing hard makes me feel like the dumbest, happiest, most pig-headed person on the planet.

Today, hanging sheets on the line in the sun and wind. Baking a Turkish yogurt cake for my evening poetry' group. Maybe a noontime visit with a friend. A walk in the cemetery. And writing, and writing, and writing.

I promised you a sad photo, and here she is, poor little Alcott House, patched and scarred. Believe me, she looks a lot better than she did on Saturday afternoon, when she was a gaping maw. The new door kept out yesterday's wind and rain; and with floors mopped, windows washed, and wood stove alight, Chuck and I were snug.

After cleaning up construction dirt, I spent yesterday prepping for this weekend's workshop in Belfast, then running out midday to get my hair cut before capitulating again to the siren song of my Sappho project. Leek and potato soup for dinner, with anadama toast, a tomato and broccoli salad, and orange cake with blueberry sauce. Tom blessedly taking a night off and doing nothing much more than doze on the couch. Rain pattering in the darkness.

Meanwhile, the poems uncoil a universe.