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--

Finally I'm beginning to feel like myself, sleep-wise anyway.  Thus here I am, awake at the usual witching hour, considering the Friday ahead . . . recycling day, laundry day, dealing with piles of peppers and peaches day; but also I am going to write this morning. I accomplished almost nothing writing-wise during our Chicago trek, but I did take lots of notes and photos at the Art Institute's Thorne Miniature Room Collection, all focusing around one 1940s-era room, and I want to consider how those jottings might fit into my current writing projects--specifically the one that's linked to the Sappho annotations.

Still, the editing obligations are pressing, as are the vegetable and fruit jobs. One of T's co-workers has a peach tree and I, of course, am unable to say no to bounty. But the pepper situation is of my own making: I ordered them in bulk from the CSA because they were gorgeous and cheap and relatively easy to process for the freezer. I might pickle and can a batch as well, if I can find the time on Sunday.

Plus, I've got peppers in the garden to deal with: a crop of ripe Serranos that I should string up for drying. And so much basil, parsley, cilantro, and chard . . . wasn't this supposed to be a year of less work?

So, tonight: seared peppers for dinner, tossed with tofu, miso, scallions, lime, and cilantro. And today, poems.

Here's one of my photos of the tiny room . . . you may perceive it as a regular space, but it's in fact dollhouse-sized, like an exact miniature of a noir movie.

Sorry to be coming to you late this morning, but Tom set his alarm for the wrong time, and all three of us (including Chuckie) snoozed blithely on. Actually, I retract that apology. I'm not sorry to be coming to you late. Sleep is the temporary king of this household, and we are all eager to be ruled by him.

Meanwhile, rain fell overnight, and now yesterday's sweater temperatures have morphed into humid warmth and a brisk breeze is kicking up the dry leaves. A few minutes ago Tom managed to get out of the house and head to work--still in my car. We had bad news about his truck, of course. It needs a new rack-and-pinion, an expensive job that can't be tackled till the end of next week, so I still limp along carless. Blah.

Otherwise, I'm trying to return to some semblance of routine. I spent yesterday dealing with laundry, groceries, baking bread, answering emails, and today I'll turn my thoughts to the big editing project that dropped onto my desk while I was in Chicago. Next Wednesday I'll be hitting the road again--this time heading to Brooklyn for a few days--so I'll try to crank out as much editing as I can over the next few days. And then the following week I'll start my Monson Arts year. In between I've got weekend readings--one this Saturday, in Yarmouth; another coming up in Winthrop later in the month. I sure hope Tom's ride is fixed soon.

Yes, I'm alive and home and all is well except that I am extremely underslept. Consider this note a placeholder as I slowly consider the possibility of writing an actual post. Check in here a little later today to find out if I fell asleep face-first into my computer or if I managed to put together a couple of coherent sentences . . .

**

Tom and I left James's house at 8:15 on Monday night and unlocked the door of our own house just before 1 a.m. on Wednesday morning. I instantly fell asleep as soon as I climbed into bed and was 100 percent unconscious until 7 a.m., which is a late hour for me to rise but didn't add up to nearly enough rest to repair the previous two nights' train-trip insomnia and wedding-giddyness insomnia combined with time-zone lag. So pardon all grammatical-logical lapses in this post. I don't really know what it means to be conscious yet.

A few minutes ago I did get up and go downstairs and make coffee and empty the dishwasher. But then I brought the coffee back upstairs and climbed into bed again. So that's as far as I've gotten with my day. Tom has the more daunting task of getting his sick truck to the mechanic this morning. The mechanic is located conveniently around the corner, but the truck has no power-steering fluid, so effort will be expended. I'm glad not to be the one who has to expend it.

Though eventually I, too, will manage to exert myself. Piles of laundry await, as do the curiosities of an empty refrigerator. I need to fetch Chuckie home from the kennel. My email inbox is clogged with obligation. The garden is dry.

Meanwhile, wedding photos are starting to trickle in. Here are a couple more of my guys--James posing in the white suit, Paul playing flower girl.

And here's a little slice of my side of the family--left to right, my brother-in-law Kurt, my nephew Nick and his partner MC, my sister Heather, me clutching a beer can and looking wild-eyed, my son Paul and his partner Lily.

Just a quick note as the train's claim to wifi is symbolic only. I write to you from somewhere between Erie and Buffalo. The sun is glaring into the train's dirty windows, the school buses are stopped safely at the railway crossings, the cafe car is open and serving hot n' tasteless coffee, all of my children are tired and happy, and tomorrow I will muse here about the similarities between camping and an overnight train ride in coach. 

The pride of my heart, all here.