I'm feeling a little under the weather this morning--kind of shivery and twingy and sour-mouthed; no fever but something is going on. So it may be a quiet day, not that I had anything fancy planned. 

Yesterday I updated my computer operating system, and this morning, as I was beginning to write to you, I watched in horror as Apple's predictive text began taking over my meandering first words. I had a moment of imagining that my relationship with this blog had been destroyed before I figured out I could eliminate the evil tool in settings.

Why not give new users the option to turn on predictive text instead of making them turn it off? Why assume that what writers really want is to not write? Sure, there are plenty of people who are happy to let the computer do the thinking, but why can't they be the ones who have to go into settings and hunt down the button that answers their yearning?

Now daylight begins to arch over the roofs and trees. From my couch corner I crane up at ash tree branches that have suddenly, since yesterday, broken into bud. Spring shouts a new surprise every single hour.

Bet you wouldn't have come up with that sentence, predictive text.

Lenten roses are in their glory now, and species tulips and bloodroot are also lovely. The three ramps I planted without much hope during Covid are spreading beautifully among the bloodroot flowers, and I've even been able to selectively cut a few leaves for meals.

It's been so good to get outside, to relearn my gardening muscles, to idle by the wheelbarrow and watch robins splash in the birdbath. There is no such thing as catching up on garden chores: as soon as I finish, I have to start all over again. But overall the homestead is looking bright and neat and slightly crazy, which is how I like it best.

Yesterday Teresa talked to me about my new manuscript, a conversation that's left me nervous, gloomy, frozen, and overexcited, in about equal proportions. Ugh. Poetry. Why is it so hard? [You know I don't really mean that but, jeez, by this time you'd think I'd have figured something out.]

This poet laureate thing has already been a lesson in humility. I just don't know that much about poems, despite having spent the bulk of my life immersed in them. Who am I to be an ambassador for such a mysterious art . . . an art that is like water running through fingers, like air sifting through a screen.

Well, thank goodness for daffodils, and hot coffee, and Young Charles cheerfully pushing a sliver of kindling under the doormat. The poems settle into the cracks, rise like dust, barely visible but always present. Blink and you miss them. Blink and they're everywhere.

Yesterday I finished an editing project, hung out a big load of laundry, baked a batch of pumpkin bread, and got quite a bit done in the garden: weeded four beds and began on a fifth, trimmed grass, dug dandelions out of the gravel, even did some edging. It was satisfying to make so much progress; also satisfying to draft two decent poem-blurts at my writing group in the evening and then to sleep solidly all night long.

Those sorts of days are tonic. The work of my hands aligns with the work of my head; everything feeds into everything else. The poems exist because I dug dandelions out of the gravel, because I folded Tom's stiff, air-scented shirts, because the kitchen was fragrant with ginger and cinnamon. I don't know how to manufacture that synchronicity. More often than not, time is just chore slapped against chore, days as floating flotsam, obligations tangled together in awkward friction or unrolling in bland tedium. But when everything talks to everything else . . . when the work is the conversation: that is the sunshine.

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)]