One more small editing project to finish today, and then I am out from under, at least for the moment. There are some many other tasks wailing at me and tugging at my skirt. I need to get ready for next week's Monson class, I need to finish prepping for my November Poetry Kitchen class, I need to return to planning the chapbook I'll be doing with the printer David Wolfe, I need to start reading the Berryman collection, I need to actually write poems again . . . 

But at least that giant editing project is off my desk. And I did get the housework done, and I did catch up on thinking-ahead grocery shopping so that the freezer is now stocked with protein basics that I can plan around as I'm coming and going. We don't have a big deep-freeze, just the small box freezer over the refrigerator. So my stock-up-ahead space is limited, and it's already bulging with tomato sauce, peaches, blueberries, chicken broth, sweet peppers, wild mushrooms, corn, chard, basil, parsley . . . But all of that will disappear quickly, once the garden shuts down for the season.

It's funny: for some people I know, the homestead urge--to save, store, squirrel away--doesn't intersect with any interest in actually cooking. Despite a freezer stuffed with produce, they're still mostly opening canned soup for dinner. The freezer boxes sit in perpetuity, with next summer's produce tossed on top of them. This is an odd disconnect, a weird version of hoarding, maybe. I've seen the same thing happen with firewood: the restless fear of running out of wood, so that every tiny branch is cut and stacked in every corner of the yard, where they slowly rot away under snow and time.

So often, the desire to save overshadows the desire to use. When we bought our house in Harmony, we found box after box stuffed into the crawl space over the shop, all filled with neatly cut strips of foam-based acoustic tiles of the sort that were popular in ugly schools in the 1970s--each strip maybe 10 inches long and 2 inches wide . . . completely useless for anything, but how long did it take to cut those scraps to size, to neatly fill those boxes, to lug them up a ladder and stack them tidily for "the future"?

It's still raining, lightly, lightly. What a gorgeous storm this has been--so long and slow. The grass has greened again, the plants have relaxed . . . and yesterday morning on my walk I found exactly what I had hoped to find: a huge gift of maitake mushrooms nestled among the roots of an oak tree.

Those are dishpans you're looking at, each one loaded with dripping-wet mushrooms--probably ten or fifteen pounds. And needless to say, with this many mushrooms to process, my plans for the day changed suddenly. I did finish the editing project, but I pushed all of the housework aside because dealing with this amount of treasure requires hours of slow washing, trimming, and then cooking. In the end four quarts went into the freezer, I roasted a bowlful for dinner, and we are in mushroom Eden around here. Maitakes are, as they say in the biz, choice. 

Yesterday a couple of my poems appeared in the new issue of the Maine Arts Journal, along with an introduction by my dear Betsy Sholl. Anything Betsy writes about my work makes me cry; her affection and approbation are among the sweetest things I know. As an apprentice poet in the woods I admired her so much from afar. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that we really are friends now.

Today I'll catch up on the housework I shoved to the side yesterday and then turn my thoughts to finishing a second editing assignment. I ought to make appointments for Covid and flu shots, and I certainly should take a trip to the fish market to restock the freezer. Now that I'm on school time again, I need to reconfigure my meal planning accordingly. No more idle forays: when I come home late, the materials for dinner must be waiting for me.

But of course there's always the possibility I might find another giant cache of mushrooms on my walk . . .

It's been raining for close to 24 hours now and will likely continue for most of another 24. It's been a long time since we've had this much rain, and it's been perfect: no gale-force downpours and the rain falling slow enough so that the ground has a chance to absorb it.

I kept a little fire going all day yesterday, just for the pleasure of idling beside it. I did accomplish a few useful things, but mostly I nursed my cold, and this morning I do feel like I'm on the mend. It was never a very large cold, just a small first-day-of-school reminder, but still it left me slow-bodied and slow-witted. A rainy Sunday at home was a convalescent's dream.

This morning I'll be back to work: first, a walk and mushroom hunt in the rain; then weekly housework, a zoom meeting, and with luck I'll also manage to finish my editing project. Pan-roasted spicy chicken is on the docket for dinner, alongside fresh salsa and guacamole and buttered Swiss chard. I need to run a couple of errands. I'd like to work on a poem but likely won't have time. I'm finishing up Niall Williams's This Is Happiness and then I'll start on John Berryman's Dream Songs (my next reading project with Teresa) and Ruth Moore's A Walk down Main Street, about high school basketball in 1950s-era Maine.

***

One thing I did accomplish on my convalescent day was to send out the first fundraising letter for the Baron Wormser Scholarship for Teachers. Baron died last October--on my birthday--so now seemed like a good time to announce this initiative and to think again about how much he gave to the world. Here's the letter I sent out. If you can donate to the fund, I would be so grateful--

Announcing the Baron Wormser Scholarship for Teachers

Last October we lost our friend and mentor Baron Wormser to brain cancer. As the first anniversary of that loss approaches, I have been thinking again about the hole his absence has left. So many of us were changed by his writings, his teaching, his comradeship. He built a space for many people who might not otherwise have known we belonged to the poetry world. He helped us to find one another, and to find ourselves.

Perhaps Baron’s greatest public service was his devotion to teachers and to young people. When he founded the Conference on Poetry and Teaching at the Frost Place more than two decades ago, he threw out a lifeline to teachers who had been struggling to balance their own creative longings with their responsibility to their students as well as with the burdens of institutional requirements and increasing political pressure. The conference quickly attracted participants from around the United States and beyond. Though it began by focusing on K–12 educators, it was soon welcoming community college and university professors, MFA candidates, teaching artists, people working in social service and government positions, even poets with no institutional affiliation who were simply drawn to the collegial, democratic nature of the conference.

After Baron retired as director of the conference in 2012, I was honored to shoulder the work he’d begun. Now, after nearly a quarter-century at the Frost Place, it is thriving today as the Conference on Poetry and Learning, held each July at Monson Arts in central Maine.

In honor of Baron, I am announcing the establishment of the Baron Wormser Scholarship for Teachers, a full scholarship to the conference that will be awarded annually to a K–12 inservice teacher who could not otherwise afford to attend.

If you would like to honor Baron with a donation to this scholarship fund, I would be immensely grateful. Simply follow this link and scroll through the donation options until you find “Conference on Poetry and Learning (Baron Wormser Donation).”

Your support of the conference helps us continue the work that Baron began. He believed that poetry opened a window into the best of humanity. Our teachers and our young people are the future we must cherish.

In this half-lit hour, wet sidewalks glisten, and a steady breeze spins and rattles among the leaves. There's no rain falling at the moment, though the air is spongy with moisture. 

A Carolina wren bursts into voice. Teary, teary, teary. Teary, teary, teary . . . She repeats, repeats, repeats, then suddenly falls silent. A gust flutters the screen door.

Upstairs Chuck chirps at Tom, and Tom replies, Oh? In the strengthening daylight I note that the neighbors' driveway is pasted with soppy leaves, and now a next round of drizzle begin to tap at the panes.

Here's hoping for storm all day, pot of minestrone on the stove, cup of tea in hand, reading books by the fire, occasional check-ins on the Sox and the Bills games, nothing much, nothing important, a wet Sunday at home, Chuckie scrabbling noisily among the dining-room chair legs, a loaf of bread on the rise.

Saturday morning. Darkness still curls over the little northern city by the sea, and roofs, chimneys, maples are sharp-edged silhouettes against the sky's blue ink. So far, no rain or wind has made landfall, but surely the bay is thickening, whipping itself into foam and thunder, and the humid air is heavy with portent. 

I lit the wood stove yesterday, for the first time this season, and listened to the Sox beat the Cubs, and mashed potatoes and roasted broccoli, and turned on the lamps, and the soft weight of autumn evening settled onto house, garden, sidewalk, street.

Now Chuckie crunches his chow, and Tom sighs in his sleep. Day slowly pulls up the shades, and inky sky fades to pale cloud.

In a little while I'll go for my walk, I'll deal with laundry, I'll find something to wear, I'll gather together books, I'll climb into the car, I'll drive off to the north, I'll read poems. Meanwhile, the ocean will churn and gulls will flatten and veer in the wind.

There is nothing like a storm to make one's own doings feel small.

I just woke up from a dream in which I was trying to teach in a crowded classroom in Guilford, Maine, but the kids were playing music, joking, talking, completely ignoring me. Some administrator--the principal?--was in the room observing and appeared to be entirely unconcerned about my helpless state. It's a standard version of a teacher anxiety dream, but the timing is odd as I have just taught two different populations of kids (in New Jersey and in Monson) and didn't have trouble with either. Does my brain think I should be more scared than I am?

Yesterday I went for a walk, baked two apples pies, did the grocery shopping, edited a novel, endured a meeting, finished stacking our green firewood, went out to my poetry group, and wrote a funny poem draft that I'm pleased with--altogether a productive day. Today should be quieter. I'll be talking with Teresa this afternoon about Aurora Leigh, but otherwise I'll mostly be at my desk trying to make a dent in the editing project and attempting to remember what it feels like to be home.

The homey feeling will be brief as tomorrow I'll be on the road again, reading at Bailey Memorial Library, 1 p.m., in Winthrop. Terrible weather is forecast for the weekend, but Saturday looks like the less problematic day, so stop by if you're in the Augusta area. I'm thinking I might bring along that crown of sonnets again.

And then I really will be home, and for an entire week too. Such a novelty! My first plan is to thoroughly enjoy the oncoming nor'easter on Sunday . . . light a fire in the wood stove, bake bread and simmer minestrone, deal with herbs (pack up dried sage, thyme, and dill; process more parsley and basil for the freezer), maybe watch the Bills game if it's available on local TV, definitely fall asleep in front of the fire while rain whips at the windows. Doesn't that sound ideal?

We had a great first day of school at Monson Arts. This year's cohort is already eager to write, talk, and share, though most have known each other for only about 5 minutes. I've got two repeats from last session, the younger relative of a previous student, and, for the first time, an alum of the visual arts program who's decide to do the writing program this year. I've also got my first homeschooler, though V/A has had a few over the years. What I'm short of, so far, are boys (only one). But a couple of the schools had conflicts and couldn't send kids for the first day, so that may change.

On the way home Gretchen and I  took a side trip to North Star Orchards in Madison, my very favorite orchard on earth. I was a regular customer there, all the years we were in Harmony. They have extremely effective storage practices, so the fruit is fresh and firm late into the season, and the spot itself is just gorgeous--up on a rise that overlooks the western Maine mountains and down into New Hampshire's Presidentials. And to my great happiness, the owner remembered me clearly, asked after my boys, and altogether reminded me that my life in Harmony was real.

So I came home loaded with nostalgia and Tom's favorite apples (and also pears, a gift from the chef in Monson), which means that today I'll need to squeeze pie baking into the schedule. I have to edit, and I have to grocery-shop, and I have to meet with arts commission folks, and now I have to slice up apples and roll out dough. What I don't need to do is go away overnight any time soon. So much road stuff, so close together. I am very ready to be home.