Late yesterday afternoon I agreed to step in as visiting faculty at the Frost Place Poetry Seminar next week, doing a reading on Monday night and a craft talk on Friday morning in place of someone who's ill. Naturally this is a bit head-spinning as I have to quickly come up with an hour-and-a-half craft talk I hadn't planned on giving, but I think I can massage my upcoming generative workshop into more of a discussion-based situation.

So I enter the weekend, after a pretty slow week, suddenly feeling breathless. My work life can be strange.

However, today is the day that T rips off the shed roof, and that means I cannot primarily be sketching out craft talks. I expect I'll be out there helping him empty the shed, sort through stuff, haul it into piles, etc. The poetry will have to percolate quietly on its own.

Yesterday I picked our first couple of tomatoes and fried our first eggplant. The late summer garden is stepping into its power. I'd like to find some time to weed today, in and around my shed duties. I have to start the watering chore again. I've started reading The Perpetual Curate, written by a mid-Victorian novelist I've spent almost no time with: Mrs. Oliphant. I'm also reading Natalie Diaz's Postcolonial Love Poem and Sue Scavo's Buried [A Place]. I've been whipping through Sunday NYT crossword puzzles like they're elementary-school word searches. I don't know what's going on with my brain, but it is stuffed full of words. Probably a shed day will be good for it.