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.

Here I am again, awake too early, but at least I'm getting up at 4:30 after a full night's sleep, not lying sleepless in bed at 1 a.m. Fortunately, my back injury or whatever this is seems to be gradually healing. I'm still quite stiff, but less so than I was, and the shooting pains have dissipated. Maybe I'll have a Tylenol-free day . . . that would be a treat.

Since I'll be hitting the road for Vermont tomorrow, I've got to get my housework done today, and run errands, and otherwise behave like a non-injured person. I'd like to do some inaugural yard work but I may not have the time or the bending capacity. Gardening is basically just a string of strange yoga poses wrapped around shrubs, and my flexibility is convalescent. But by next weekend I should be back to normal.

Even setting aside my injury issues, the last few days have been odd. As you know, I've been carrying around some news that I can't yet share, but it's rattled me a little, washed me into an evanescent past-present-future that is not so different from convalescence. I'm intermittently distracted, elegiac, prone to tears. Probably it's a good thing that I'm going to Vermont for a few days, where I'll be confronted by situations and obligations and won't have the luxury to waft around in a fugue state.

First, though, I need to find a novel to read. And by the way, I've had another thought about that possible Poetry Kitchen class: syntax as inspiration. Maybe one of these days I'll get a chance to work out the details.

It's cold this morning, which is too bad because today is the big No Kings protest so in a few hours we'll have to go downtown and stand around and freeze. Sigh. But when civic duty calls, you put on long underwear and two coats and trudge up the hill and speak your mind.

Fortunately my yanked back muscle or whatever this is seems to be healing, though I'm still very stiff and sore when I get out of bed. Yesterday I swallowed only one dose of Tylenol and managed to do my house chores and even walk my usual two-plus miles, so that was an improvement over the day before, when I was running entirely on acetaminophen and having a hard time putting on my socks. But I'm not sleeping well--body discomfort plus busy thoughts, always a winning combination--which accounts for why I'm writing to you so early on a Saturday morning. 

Still, it's nice to be quiet and untethered, even if I have to be awake. I like knowing that T is asleep, that Chuck is roaming the floors, that the lamps glow and the furnace groans and coffee steams in the pot. The weekend already feels so brief: on Monday I'm heading to Vermont to visit my parents for a couple of days, and then as soon as I return I'll drop into extreme busyness again: end-of-year teaching lunacy, conference prep, stacks of editing, gardening. But now is a little window of peace.

Speaking of the conference, we are completely full! Wait list only! And with a number of new participants signed up alongside some regulars! I'm so pleased, and relieved. Every year I doom-talk myself into imagining it won't run, no one will show up, the program's a bust, that's it, give up, etc. You know that conversation: who else can you trust to be your own worst enemy?

Now that I've quelled the doom-talker, what I ought to do is design another Poetry Kitchen class for later this summer. I've had so much else to do lately that I haven't had the wherewithal to keep inventing classes. But I'm considering a generative poetry session based around the influence of the novel--maybe selections from Woolf, James, Bowen, Henry Green; maybe some Victorians as well . . . I haven't even begun to suss out how this might work, but it feels like it could be rich.

So a thing happened to me yesterday afternoon that I cannot tell you about for a few days . . . which I understand is an annoying teaser and you have every right to be irritated, but my thoughts have been so occupied by the surprise, pleasure, nerves, and elegy linked to this news that I can't refrain from acknowledging my state of mind. Fortunately I'll be busy today: finishing an editing project (I hope), dashing out for a haircut, then talking to Teresa about Aurora Leigh. In Florida we agreed in passing that we were moved and excited by the poem, but we didn't have any chance to talk more intently about what we were seeing. I'm looking forward to finding out what brilliant thoughts she's uncovering.

Otherwise, I'm still kind of hobbled by my sore back, though it's better than it was, and my nose still won't stop running, and Chuck is trying to drink my coffee, and I've got to haul trash to the curb or get Tom to do it for me if that chore turns out to be a dumb idea for my injury. But maybe at some point today I'll also have a chance to look at the draft-blurt in my notebook--the first new poem draft I've written for weeks. It was so good to get back to work with the poets last night. How I love my writing group. That is a thing I never thought I'd say, back in the days when I was a proud solitary in the woods. But these poet-friends make Portland a sort of Eden.

Had a good, productive class yesterday, then a staff meeting about how we'll organize the remaining Monson sessions, and eventually I made it home, late but still in daylight, which feels like such a treat. Really, the only thing that went wrong was that somehow, I have no idea how or when, I yanked a muscle on one side of my lower back, and now I feel like I'm 102, wincing and groaning as I creep through the house.

Well, I expect it will improve . . . not stiffening up in the car for two and half hours will surely help, and T massaged it out a couple of times yesterday evening, which also seemed to improve things. A slow walk and some Tylenol, and perhaps soon I will feel like I'm 95 or even 87.

Otherwise today I'll be back at my desk, with hopes of making big progress on the editing project. And unless I'm not ambulatory I hope to go out to write tonight. I haven't been to my writing group for weeks, and I've really missed it.

One thing I need to do is return my attention to my new manuscript. While the kids were working yesterday, I pulled up the file and spent some time staring at it--accomplishing nothing other than relearning what I'd made, but that in itself seemed important. A manuscript is a private life that tentatively reaches toward a public one. It is an odd transitional object--not a book yet, though it hopes and worries. Still, it has separated itself from me . . . it has stepped forward into a new space. I read it and wonder what these once-familiar words have become.

For a change, no bad weather was involved in my travels to Monson. Last time I saw these kids I was zooming from bed in a post-blizzard Brooklyn apartment. Two weeks later we were canceled entirely because of an ice storm.

Losing that day meant losing a full session of prep before our gallery show.  It was unfortunate: now I'm going to have to cram a whole lot of late-stage revision and final editing practice into only two classes. We'll manage, but we'll be pressed.

However, at least I got a ton of sleep last night, which with luck will tamp down the head cold. Since Christmas I've been sick more than I haven't been . . . nothing serious, just colds lining up one after another, but the procession has been wearying.

I have to say, it is odd to be back in actual Monson after being in Florida working on a project about Monson. 

I'm glad to report that Chuck's gut troubles are easing. The poor guy came home from the kennel with diarrhea--not at all the fault of the kennel owner, I'm sure, but more likely a flareup of his chronic intestinal issues. You may recall our battle with Giardia last fall, and how I was cleaning the litterbox ten times a day and chasing the kitten around the house with wet wipes. Young Charles has improved a lot since those days but has never been perfect. Now, with the relapse, I've been focusing on not letting him get dehydrated and trying to get his gut bacteria back on the job. And he's so much better! I'm feeling quite proud of myself, and also very happy we haven't had to rack up another vet bill.

This afternoon I'll head north for an overnight in Monson, so T will have to deal with the Chuck regimen. And this morning I'll be shipping an editing project, going for a walk with a friend, catching up on conference paperwork, and fidgeting around with various this-and-that tasks. I did get the housework done yesterday and am more or less caught up with travel laundry, etc. Funny how long it takes to settle back into the rhythm of household chores.

I'd like to settle back into a writing rhythm too, but that hasn't happened yet. Of course the trip to Florida was all about making new work as a collective, and the Bangor presentation was all about helping other, possibly reluctant people make new work, but neither was about the private me as a poet. I'd like to think that I can find some space next week, but who knows.

In the meantime, I'm rereading one of my very favorite books, Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day. And possibly this head cold is improving. And this weekend I'm going to buy some garden seeds.