Believe it or not, this is the daylight view from my living room window . . . Sarasota Bay.

We arrived around noon, a fairly expeditious trip, though since we'd been up since 3:30 we felt like we'd been on the road forever. When I stepped through the doors of baggage claim, my skin was shocked by the temperature change: 80 degrees and humid. My lank winter hair instantly began curling, and in the apartment we demonstrated our heat-starved northernness by immediately opening the windows and turning off the air conditioning, apparently a thing that no Floridians ever do.

Yesterday was mostly business: getting everyone from the airport, dealing with car rental and grocery shopping. Today we'll go to work. Exactly what that will mean I don't know, except that I think we need to get poems into the air.

I feel like I'm in an alien world. Florida is not a place I can easily imagine myself, even when I'm here. I look across this bay, ringed with highways and high-rises, and wonder what such an expanse would have been before Europeans arrived.  This is where Cabeza de Vaca set foot on North American soil. There is no silence now.

Apparently I made the correct decision not to travel north because this morning I see that half of my schools have already canceled because of the impending ice storm. Well, I'm relieved that this wasn't just me being spleeny; also relieved that I don't have to spend another sad class on zoom; also extremely relieved that I will not be driving through ice, snow, and freezing rain for three hours.

Instead, I've had two unexpected days at home, which has not only been a huge help as regards my editing schedule but is also allowing me to enter into this Florida adventure in a more relaxed way. Originally I planned to be teaching a full day up north, then making the long drive home, then rushing Chuck to the cat kennel, then rushing home and dealing with cat litter, trash, packing, refrigerator emptying, etc. I'll still have to deal with all of that end-of-the-day flurry, but at least the rest of the day will be less stressful.

You won't hear from me tomorrow morning as we have to be out of the house by 4:30 a.m. But if all goes smoothly, I'll be back to posting on Friday.

Argh, March. After a few days of warmth and melt, tomorrow will drop us back into cooler temperatures and rain, which is no big deal here in Portland. But up north the forecast is for sleet and freezing rain all day, so now I'm back to the everlasting conundrum: do I take the risk and drive to central Maine this afternoon, or do I zoom yet again with my students? Will they even have school if the weather is as crappy as it's forecast to be? Blah. With a plane to catch on Thursday morning, I can't take the risk of being trapped up there tomorrow. But how I hate to zoom with my young people.

Well, I guess I'll figure out something or other this morning. Rural Mainers love to shame those of us who don't like to drive in wretched weather, and after 20 years among them I still wrestle with my weak-mindedness in that regard. Also, I feel so guilty about zooming again. During our last class I was stuck in Brooklyn in a blizzard, and I said to the kids then: "This is it! No more zooming!" And now the weather gods are snickering and snorting gleefully among themselves. They always have the last word.

Enough about tomorrow. Today, at least, will be reliably gorgeous . . . another dose of sunshine and warmth, the scent of thawing earth, new green spikes among the muddy leaves. We've lost a lot of snow over the past few days. My back yard is almost visible again, and today I may mosey out there and investigate what's what under the mulch. March, your aggravations are legion, but every year you fool me again.

Yesterday's temperatures reached 60 degrees, and I glimpsed the first tulip and scylla leaves poking through the leafmold in the south-facing gardens along the foundation. We still have snow but it is soupy and thinning, and after another overnight in the 40s I can tell that even more has melted away.

T was working on taxes all day but took a break with me for a drive over to the Eastern Prom and a walk along the waterfront, where we watched happy wet dogs roll on the beach and strolled past about a thousand bleary-eyed young parents pushing strollers. Clearly it was "get the baby out of the house" day, and why not? The wind was warm, the puddles were deep, the gulls were skreeking . . . it was the kind of day when the sap is running in the maples and the hounds are lifting their noses into the breeze and the babies are kicking their feet and waving to strangers.

Otherwise, I got done what I needed to get done--mostly finishing my Aurora Leigh homework and magically not (yet) screwing up my part of the taxes. Today I'll be back at my desk cranking out another batch of editing before I hit the road for Wellington and Monson tomorrow afternoon. The press has kindly built the schedule for this project around my travels, but I'm still anxious about losing momentum as I will have zero time to do any manuscript work when I'm in Florida.

So today: edit edit edit, plus a walk, plus a few errands, plus the inevitable laundry and a few more hours of home time before the flurry begins.

Not only did the clocks change last night, but it's 44 degrees this morning in the little northern city by the sea--a double upheaval to confuse and confound us in our winter stronghold. Under the streetlights the wet asphalt glitters, and the snow piles look like melting ice cream edged in mud. It's still dark: no birds are singing yet, but I daresay they will be out in force this morning. Last week, during a minor warmup,  a sudden chorus of titmice, house finches, cardinals, nuthatches, chickadees, cedar waxwings, downy woodpeckers flash-mobbed the neighborhood. Today they're likely to give us a full orchestra production.

My new bathing suit arrived in the mail yesterday, and I love it, which is not a declaration one might expect from a 61-year-old very pale-skinned non-swimmer, but it's cute and comfortable and doesn't make me look terrible and has a decent amount of coverage for someone who gets sunburns just by thinking about them. I then spent a chunk of the day digging out summer clothes and trying on various things to see how I might manage my rehearsal clothes/street clothes challenge, given that I do not own even one pair of shorts but spend my northern summers in skirts and dresses. Young Chuck found this dressing-room project fascinating, and his participation means I will be traveling to Florida with a generous smear of black cat fur in my suitcase. But even with his help, I think I've mostly worked out a feasible wardrobe that won't take up much luggage space.

I expect this exposition on outfits is entirely uninteresting to you, but the trip is such a novelty in my life, and Tom is equivalently confounded. For two people who rarely talk about clothes, we are spending an awful lot of time talking about clothes.

Today, however, I plan to stop caring about them. What I want to do is to go for a long walk amid the snowmelt and listen to the bird symphony and snuff up the scents of wet earth. I want to finish reading Trollope's Doctor Thorne and find another fat but not too fat novel to pack for my travels. I want to cook chicken and wild mushroom risotto and read Aurora Leigh and not get into trouble with Tom for making mistakes on my taxes. All of that seems doable, except maybe for the tax part.

This morning, first thing, I had to drive our friends through ice and freezing rain to the bus station--the first leg of an extended journey that will eventually deposit them in Sarasota with us. Weather like this makes it hard to imagine that weather like Florida's really exists, yet in a week I will be sweaty.

For now, though, I am ensconced in my couch corner, nursing a belated cup of coffee and very glad not to be slithering through the glassy streets. Tom is asleep, Young Chuck is happily pencil-pushing a Dixon Ticonderoga into a tight corner behind the woodbox, and hazy first light is peering through bare and icy branches.

This weekend will mostly be devoted to pulling myself together for this ridiculous travel odyssey--north, then south, then north, then more north. So pharmacy, grocery store, laundry, suitcases, books to sell, books to read, presentation, lesson plans, manuscript . . . sun hat, winter hat, sunscreen, sandals, snow boots, reading outfit, work clothes . . . What a jumble.

We've spent months preparing for this Sarasota residency--researching, writing poems and scenarios, compiling possibilities, creating movement, all while trying to keep up with other important things, like our jobs. The project has been time- and thought-consuming, to say the least. Yet we haven't even begun to organize these materials into a coherent script. That's what will happen in Florida, and already the schedule feels tight, though we'll be in the studio full time every day. I know I'm carrying my load writing-wise, but I have little experience with performance design, and I worry about being a dead weight in that regard. I worry about a lot of things--such as dancing in public and remembering where my body is in space. But that's the point of this collaboration: four different artists are coming together to create something they wouldn't otherwise know how to make. I am trying to trust in that.

***

On another note: I've got two spaces left for this summer's Conference on Poetry and Learning at Monson Arts. If you want to hang out with the best colleagues possible, learn how multidisciplinary collaborations can enrich you as a poet and/or a teacher, eat delicious food, swim in a gorgeous lake, sleep in a comfortable bed, and also see whatever the hell we come up with in Sarasota, sign up now! And please do reach out with any questions . . . I would love to see you there.

We got a coating of new snow overnight--not enough to shovel, and no doubt it will melt as soon as the sun comes out, but sloppy for dragging around recycling bins and compost pails this morning. I'll get outside to do those things shortly, but for the moment I am recovering from a dream in which I was seething . . . I don't think I've ever been so angry within a dream before.

The scene was set in what may have been the Harmony house. Certainly the woodstove I remember is the Harmony stove, which two visiting young men decide to disassemble, hiding the parts around the house. When I discover this, I am very upset and tell them they have to put it back together. But of course parts are bent, and nothing will seal right, they are filling the rooms with ash and soot, and as they bumble I become increasingly livid until my anger is nuclear . . . I am transported with fury--

And then I wake up.

So now I am sitting here with my coffee, feeling fury drain from my veins and muscles as one feels hard labor drain away. Pure anger is so physical: the entire body clenches in sympathetic ire. Of course my anger over damage to the woodstove is entirely understandable, whether in dream or real life. In Harmony that stove was life or death. Our daily world revolved around it. So naturally it has entered my subconscious as a vital center. What surprises me more is my sheer hatred of those young men. Mostly my dreams adore young men--as one would expect, given my maternal history. But this pair . . . if looks could kill, I would have blasted them.

And that in itself is an unnerving residue: the lingering sensation of hate.