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.

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.