I spent yesterday combing through the seed catalog, bees-waxing my boots, making minestrone, and eventually falling asleep in front of football. Today I'll start a new editing project and go grocery shopping and otherwise prep myself for busyness. I'll be teaching for the Telling Room tomorrow, and the rest of the week is clogged with desk work and appointments. And then next week, Monson again.

I guess it's okay, all of this occupation. It's certainly a relief to get paid, and a relief to be treated like someone who knows a few things. But I still feel strange to be living a life that no longer revolves around taking care of my children. I wonder when that will wear off.

On my walk yesterday I saw snowdrops budding up in someone's front garden. Flowers in Maine on February 2. So strange.

Here's a poem from the embryo manuscript. It appears in the new anthology Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall.

Ancient History

Dawn Potter

Baby forgets the rain.

Forgets how the lamplight

spilled onto his page of homework.

He forgets the scent of dust,

that old wet dog in the chair,

that radio spitting its crackle of news.

Forgets the shouting in the kitchen,

the way her voice rose, the way

her plate slapped down on the counter.

He forgets the slam of the window,

the cigarette ash drifting,

the way her eyes tracked him

when he dropped his pencil on the floor

Forgets her skinny fingers,

their filthy sharp nails,

her stare like a chain

yanking him underwater.

Forgets how bad she smelled.

All he recollects

is how she crashed back and forth,

charging from burner to sink to burner—

scald slice boil scald slice boil scald slice boil—

her flailing arms bloody with tomatoes.

And Baby still sees those seven hot jars, 

mashed vegetable flesh straining against the glass:

            how they hissed

as she yanked each from the canner

and flung them screaming,

            one after one after one,

out the yawing front door.