It's been a windy, chilly week, but this morning the birds are singing lustily, and temperatures are already in the 40s, and I'm hoping it'll be an appealing day for gardening. I've had trouble dredging up enthusiasm for crawling around in cold wet dirt. I've done it, but it's felt like penance.

In other acts of penance: I finished rereading Byatt's The Children's Book yesterday and, as usual, have been cast into gloom by her evocation of the wretched waste of World War I. If I were smart I'd read a cheerful book next, but I just got W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn out of the library, so that will be my fate for the next few days. Still, I'm looking forward to it. Somehow I've never read Sebald before, though I've known about him forever.

And Tom's home, so that's a bright spot, even though he'll be trudging off to work shortly. With luck I'll finish an editing project this morning and then be able to idle with my own stuff for a few hours. I have to steal time when I can because another burst of obligation lies on the horizon. On Saturday I need to make an appearance at the Plunkett Poetry Festival in Augusta. On Tuesday I head north so I can teach my high schoolers on Wednesday. On Thursday I'll take part in a big poet laureate extravaganza in Freeport. On Friday I have a phone interview with a writer for the Haverford alumni magazine. I'm not sure how Haverford found out about the PL thing, but such mysteries are the story of my life lately.

Probably there's other stuff on the calendar, too, but for now it's a blur. Though, by the way, I forget if I mentioned that there's just one spot left in the next Poetry Kitchen class. Grab it fast if you've been thinking about it because I probably won't be offering another PK session until the fall.

My neighbor and I went into town yesterday around dinner time--first, to an open house at Mechanics Hall, a nineteenth-century workingman's lyceum that is now a library and performance space. I'd long been curious about the library, which was not exactly what I'd been imagining. I'd pictured dark volumes of 1880s blacksmithing and carriage-building tomes, and the collection is mostly contemporary. But there are some older books, and also some collections of 1950s-era Popular Mechanics and other such magazines. The articles are dull, but the ads are great. For instance, if you're looking to earn a few extra bucks, have you considered this possibility?

Afterward we went out for hotpot, which was also fun, and then I got a newsy email from Tom and talked on the phone to our kid, who is excited about a film project he's cogitating about with his brother. Nothing makes me happier than happy sons, especially when they're excited about making something together; and nothing makes Chuck happier than watching me take off my outside shoes and put on my pajamas, so he and I climbed into bed with light hearts.

This morning I've got to get my car to the garage for an oil change. And then I'll be back at my desk, and maybe I'll get outside eventually to do another batch of weeding. T will be home this afternoon, so I need to think of something nice to make for dinner. I've had a pleasant few days on my own, and I know he's had a good time too, but I suspect we'll both be glad to get back to our usual friendly ways.

I thought yesterday was going to be sunny, and sometimes it was, except when it was sleeting and hailing. The laundry did manage to dry on the lines, mostly thanks to the wind, but it wasn't a soft day in any way. Up in the Saint John Valley, on the Canadian border, Tom tells me it's raw and wet, a mix of snow and rain, and he wishes he hadn't forgotten his hat. But he sounds happy, says he's shooting a ton of film and is looking forward to another good day.

Meanwhile, Chucky is thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to be home and can hardly bear to let me out of his sight. I'm glad to have him back too. This house is lonesome without a little guy racketing around in it. Now I am drinking my coffee and he is peering out at the dim morning. It's cold, only 23 degrees outside, and the furnace is roaring at full blast. Spring seems to have shriveled back into winter. Yet a robin is trilling and chortling with enthusiasm, just as if temperatures were sweet.

This morning I'll go for a walk with a friend before crawling back into the editing mines. I don't know if I'll get out into the garden: the weather isn't deal for scooting around on my knees, which is what I mostly need to do at the moment. Dandelions in the gravel, maple seedlings everywhere: spring weeding is a chore.

But I've had two nights of solid sleep, and I'm doing a lot of reading. My little cat is chirping, and the mantlepiece is thick with daffodils. The house is clean, and my thoughts are rivers. Poems wander in and out the doors. 

I climbed into my own bed at 8 p.m. and stayed there until 6 a.m. waking only once, briefly, around 3 a.m., to grab an extra blanket because I was cold. I've been caught in an insomnia cycle for a week now, so this was a welcome, welcome change. It won't happen again because Chuck is coming home from the kennel this afternoon. But it sure was fabulous.

Now here I sit, on a Monday morning, watching bright sunlight cast tree shadows across the houses and driveways. I am not rushing around to do chores because I cleaned house and washed clothes yesterday afternoon when I returned. I will work at my desk this morning but for now I am resting in the Edenic moment: no other tasks need to be done; no other body needs my care.

As expected, the drive home from the island was rainy and miserable. But a stormy day was just what the garden needed: the seeds I planted last weekend have sprouted, the grass is green, green, green, and today's sunshine will be a balm. I'll go for a walk. Maybe I'll hang sheets on the line. I might drag the reel mower out of the shed. At my desk I'll gaze at forsythia and daffodils.

Concord Street Hymn

 

Elaine is standing on her stoop with her doddering

chow Teddy, and I am trying to decide if I

can pretend I don’t see her. Elaine has a shout 

like a blue jay’s and she specializes

in the unanswerable. “Dawn!” she hollers now, “I can’t

recognize you if you’re not wearing a hat!”

Meekly I halt and admire her daffodils.

“I dug them up by mistake,” she barks.

“Now I don’t have a-one.”

 

Next door, at the LBRSTMN’s ranch house,

there is no shouting. The license plate on his pickup

is the only information available. Otherwise: shades

drawn tight, a note to the mailman taped to the door,

a needle on the front sidewalk, and daffodils

bobbing along the foundation:

yes, there will be

 

daffodils in every stanza of this poem

because it is spring in Maine, and all people

except for teenagers are still wearing

their winter coats, and the maples

in the backyards are bare-armed wrestlers,

and the gutters are scarred with sand

and cigarette butts, and the breeze

 

kicking up from the ocean makes us

lift our muzzles like hounds.

O wind and salt!

Daffodils tremble in the yard

of the pro bono lawyer, tremble

among the faded plastic shovels of her children.

A woodpecker shouts among the bald maples

 

and Elaine maligns me: “I don’t know why you’re

outside so much. You don’t even have a dog.”

She makes me feel like dirt but that’s not

so bad. A swirl of sea-gale buffets the chimneys, 

twigs clatter onto Subarus. Daffodils, yellow as eyes,

breast the wind. Earth is thawing, they

shout, they shout, and I, on this half-

green bank, unfurl.

[from Accidental Hymn (Deerbrook Editions, 2022)]

The alarm went off at 4 a.m., and 20 minutes later T was heading north.

Meanwhile, here I sit, a new fire of cedar logs crackling, coffee steaming in a cup that reads Ernie. Eventually I'll shower, eat, pack, tidy. At 7:45 I'll walk up to W's house to do the Sunday crossword with her and her sister. And then, before 9, I'll be on the road, back in Portland by noon, reconfiguring myself into home life. I hope I won't be driving through rain, but probably I will.

Outside it is still fully dark and the peepers are king. T heard a barred owl as he was packing his truck, and with luck it will return to haunt me. Yesterday I wrote a new poem draft, so I'm already being haunted. But I always have room for more.

It will be odd but not bad to be solitary for a few days. I do wish I could get Chuck out of the kennel this afternoon, but they're not open for transactions on Sundays so he and I must wait till tomorrow for our reunion. As always, I've got plenty to keep myself busy--house, garden, desk.

Under normal circumstances I'd be heading to Monson this week, but school vacation has disrupted the schedule. So I'll have a respite--from travel, at least. I do have a memoir, a story collection, and two poem collections to copyedit. I have a lot of laundry to wash, and a lot of dandelions to dig out of the gravel walkway. Plenty of windows to gaze through. Plenty of stairs to climb.

My house is a badger’s tunnel

 

twisting and turning among roots and ledge.

It is an empty osprey’s nest, it rattles in a high gale.

 

I wake in a heap of feathers and bone.

Hope puddles under the floor.

 

The days ebb. I sweep blizzards and sand

as neighbors prowl under moonlight, hunting for breakfast.

 

In the mornings some of us are missing,

never to be seen again.

 

My house is a cavern of echoes.

It is as vast as despair, as shiny as coins.

 

I cannot find a door, yet windows are everywhere.

Each one hawks a different tale—

 

sing this tree, eat that sky.

But when I pull the curtains, darkness slides out like an eel.

 

Then I hear, very faintly,

the slow, slow drip of my life.

[from Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, 2024)]

 

We hiked Great Head yesterday--a spit of granite jutting out alongside Sand Beach, with spectacular views of the open Atlantic as well as the Beehive and other famous climbs along the Ocean Drive region of Acadia. Great Head is not known as a highly challenging hike, but post-rain it did involve a lot of scrambling over and among wet rocks, so we had to watch our footing.

The day began with fog but brightened into streaky blue skies. Long twists of cloud roped across the horizon, and Frenchman's Bay gleamed like a vast glazed bowl. In the forest a kinglet sang. A pair of black-backed gulls skated the breeze. In the distance we could just glimpse squatty, square Egg Rock Light clinging whitely to its stony isle.

We often hike on the quieter side of the island, avoiding the Bar Harbor lobe and the Park Loop Road and the other famous attractions of Acadia. The quiet trails are closer to the cottage and generally less peopled. But the drama of the Ocean Drive views is real. And on an April school day during mud season, this side of Acadia was nearly as peaceful as the other.

Today will be a work day. We may get out for a small neighborhood walk, but first we'll help load the car for the dump, take down some branches, shore up a deer fence. T will replace an old outlet in the cottage. Last night we went out to movie night at the Bass Harbor Library--a screening of Hitchcock's The Thirty-Nine Steps, always a favorite, where I was introduced to the sparse crowd as the next poet laureate. I am beginning to think I should take etiquette lessons in order to learn how to deal with my new incarnation as a minor local celebrity. I still feel like a twelve-year-old peeking out from behind a door. 

 

I arrived in fog, and the fog deepened. By the time T walked into the cottage, 45 minutes later, the cove was a blur. As dark settled in, the screel of peepers began. All night long, and even now, they shrill. At some point in the night a thunderstorm burst over the island--long flashes tearing into my vague sleep.

Night is still murky. I cannot yet make out the shape of the day, but I suspect fog and fog. When I step out onto the screened porch to get water for coffee, I am enveloped by damp.

And now, very suddenly, a robin unrolls a tune--chirr, chirrup, chirra, chirra, chirr . . .  I look up from the fire I'm trying to start in the stove and I see the cove emerging from darkness. Meanwhile, a chickadee joins the robin, offering its high-low whistle, and then a white-throated sparrow interrupts--O sweet Canada, Canada, Canada . . . Abruptly, the peepers vanish from the stage and the pallid air pulses with birdsong.

There is not so much fog as I expected. I glimpse Swan's Island huddled across the cove, the familiar spruce-lined peninsulas rippling into the circle of water. I know this view like I know my own face in the mirror . . . which is to say, not as well as I think I do. The seascape is no-color, water and land and sky mere variations of dim, yet the creases, the wry glance . . . 

Traveling alone, and meeting T here, was in its way sweet. He and I love this cottage in a way that is private to ourselves. Even our children, who have been here many times, don't quite participate in the unarticulated dearness that he and I feel for this place that doesn't belong to us. We have confidence in one another when we're here . . . I don't mean that we do anything special or unusual; just that something wells up in us: here is the other person who knows. I can't be any clearer than that, because there's no more clarity in this feeling than there is in fog. We have been deeply unhappy during many of our stays in this cottage, but we have been a bonded pair in our sorrow. Maybe that's what I mean: this place is an emblem of our duality.

As artists, as daily workers, we are separate beings. We know how to leave each other alone when that is necessary. But the other part is also true: here is the other person who knows.