Sports break:

How about those St. Peter's Peacocks, the little 15-seed from Jersey City?! They play like a swarm of bees! What a game that was last night: I was on the edge of my seat all the way through! It's so exciting to watch an unknown team take on the titans, and win! Go, Jersey boys!

Okay, sports break over. And I promise to stop ending every sentence with an exclamation point.

* * *

The sun has risen over the little northern city by the sea. I think it will be a pretty day, sunny and warmish. In the cold frame, my arugula and lettuce seeds have sprouted. Crocuses are beginning to bloom here and there around the yard. The tulips I planted last fall are spiking up through the soil. Buds are swelling on the blueberries. Grass is starting to green. 

I have some class-prep stuff to do today, but otherwise no big plans. Tom will be rushing around trying to get ready for his big adventure. He has so much equipment to tote . . . all of his cameras, his big computer, giant boots and other mud-season requirements . . . Meanwhile, I might clean house; I might work outside; I might read; I might just hang around with him.

Yesterday I did more leaf and stick cleanup, baked bread and shortbread, futzed around with Frost Place stuff, read a large chunk of the Aeneid. I also ate lunch outside, the first al fresco of the season: a slice of cold homemade pizza, a glass of water, and Wendell Berry's stories to read; perched outside at the little patio table, wearing my filthy garden sweater and baggy jeans, shivering a little but happy to be out in the sunshine, surrounded by my teeny plot of land, my miniature breadbasket, my dollhouse farm.

The Maine Woods

 

Dawn Potter

Don’t imagine I was Thoreau.

I had a driveway, though no one drove up it much,

and I had a car and gasoline, and a telephone

that rang now and again, and lamps

 

that often stayed lit, and a faucet that often

spouted water, and armloads of firewood

and a cook stove, and most evenings

I had baseball on the radio.

 

For a while I had a dog, but then

the dog died. On Friday nights

I even had a husband.

Oh, I was not Thoreau, not even close,

 

though I did have a vernal pool that was almost

a pond, and a footpath twisting

among ancient pines, and a creek

chattering and singing among the stones.

 

On the nights I had a husband

the kitchen hummed and the pillows sang

and a cat complained at the door.

But on most nights my shadow 

 

trembled in the gleam of a cloudy moon.

Small predators yipped in the dark,

and I could not find my face in the mirrors.

Up and down the stairs I trudged, up and down

 

the narrow treads. At dawn I folded the shirts.

I baked the bread. I washed the floors

and hung out the sheets.

It was important to force time 

 

through a sieve. I avoided taking

strong measures with myself.

Tears were a practical solution,

and I called on them twenty times a day.

 

I was never joyful, not for a moment,

but sometimes I was happy.

I begged the windblown trees to sweep the sky.

I coaxed the jays to scream their love.

 

Loneliness was better

than never coming home,

and never coming home

is the tale I’m about to tell.

[from Accidental Hymn (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]