Last night, at the salon, my phone blurped; I stopped to check it in case it was my kid with emergency kid stuff and the headline TRUMP INDICTED blared forth, and I said to the poets, "HEY! TRUMP INDICTED," and everyone stopped writing and said, "Ooooh," and we fluffed our feathers and harrumphed and laughed and sighed and kicked the table legs and then . . . we went back to writing and we forgot you, you asshole. You did not show up in a single draft. Score one for the rule of art, one for the rule of law, and zero for the rule of monstrous pus-filled cysts.

* * *.

Okay, rant over, and I will return to my usual amiable self. [But, Lordy, that was a satisfying moment last night.]

* * *

I am in a highly good mood this morning as, late yesterday afternoon, I finished the first, and largest, stage of the giant editing project. Though there will be more to do, this was by far the most intense stage, and my workload has instantly become more manageable. Today, for instance: I can work on class planning; I can work on poem and essay drafts; I can keep prepping for the video conversation; I can dust and vacuum . . . and the giant task will not be dangling over me like an Acme-built 1,000-pound anvil.

So today: a long walk with my neighbor. Maybe some gardening before the rain. Writing for the sake of me. Making something or other delicious for dinner. I can't wait.

My class turned out to be great yesterday--so lively and engaged, including a complex and wide-ranging conversation on how we define our own talent, what holds us back, what holds us up. It's amazing how bubbly those old Chinese poets can be, when they're dropped into a pond of teenagers. Afterward, the various staff members gathered for a meeting about end-of-year plans, so I got home later than usual, with my eyes all squinchy and exhausted. But no bad weather, no zoom, and a table full of engaged kids: thus, no complaints.

Today, back to the regular grind--editing, housework, a meeting--but I'm planning to go out to the salon tonight, which will be a respite. I think it will be a cold day, so no gardening or outdoor laundry, though I hope for a walk. My eyes are still pretty twitchy: the poor things have less and less stamina, and I use them so hard. A walk, housework, gardening: they're all rest for my eyes, if not for the other parts of me.

In Portland, crocuses are blooming everywhere, but up north the snow is still thick. Going back and forth yesterday was like jumping a fence between weather zones. Winter may be fading in central Maine, but it's not gone. Yet in the little city, bulbs are spiking everywhere; peas and spinach are planted; even the grass is hinting at green.

Today, opening day for baseball. Today, a high of 39 degrees. Today, firewood and hot tea and warm boots. Today, sprigs of infant greens thrusting through the soil. Today, tender morning light and the sweet whistle of a nesting cardinal. Today, frost on every windshield. Spring in Maine is every damn thing there is.

Unsettling dreams, and now a flat mauve sky sliced against a rusty horizon; and now the log trucks roaring past; and now the windless shiver of their absence. Monson, Maine, 6:15 a.m.

In a moment I will put on my boots and cross the street for coffee. In a moment I will pull myself together for a day with young people and books and cars and responsibility.

For now I am still vaguely feral, lurking. Everything feels strange in this strange dawn light.

                All pauses in space,

a violent compression of meaning

in an instant within the meaningless.

Even staring into the dim shapes

at the farthest edge; accepting that blur.

--from Ruth Stone's "Shapes"

I'm heading north this afternoon, teaching kids tomorrow, and it looks as if the weather will be entirely mild and welcoming. Thank goodness. We'll work on the Chinese-poet lesson I didn't get to teach last time, and maybe even possibly take ourselves outside to do some chalk writing.

Yesterday I edited all morning, then had a zoom meeting, then forced myself to go to mall-land to buy a new bedsheet and a bathroom rug. How I hate mall-land. Today, more of the same--that is, editing and a meeting; thankfully, I am done with the horrible shopping.

I'm feeling a bit queasy this morning, from a bad dream about babies, and am hoping that it wears off shortly. I've finished Lincoln in the Bardo and remain highly impressed with it, and now I'm reading Ali Smith's how to be both, which I haven't yet come to a decision about. My brain is all in a muddle: I've been doing so many things so quickly . . . editing planning four classes writing discussion questions for a video interview working on an essay making biscuits folding laundry more stuff that I've forgotten . . . Without that little Chicago respite I think I would be a pile of old rags.

Yesterday I hung clothes on the line, first outdoor laundry of the season, and T brought up the outdoor table and chairs from the cellar, and I set them up alongside the garden boxes, and the weather was windy and raw but the crocuses were blooming and we felt like spring.

Here are the little arugula speckles inside my cold frame, mixed in with the ubiquitous Norway maple samaras that will shortly be driving me crazy by sprouting everywhere. I never saw such an eager tree.

Here is an early-season shot of the Lane (if you are new to my little yard, all of its regions have names, courtesy of my younger son): cold frame in back, moveable row protector in front, arugula and spinach to come. You see how close our property is to the neighbor's. Everything I do outside, I do under a fish-eye lens. It's still very odd, after twenty-plus years in the woods, to be so public. But I'm getting used to it.

A shot of the Terrace and the Breadbasket: the contrast is poor because of the clouds, but on the far right maybe you can glimpse the pea trellis, cucumber trellis beside it, garden box with row cover, wintered-over spinach. Again, my cultivation space is smack up against my neighbor's property; you can also see how tightly it presses against the front sidewalk. It's a good thing all of my neighbors are so extremely nice.

Focus on spinach: I can't tell you how pleased I am it lasted through the winter, even through that subzero snap, without any protective cover (other than snow).

First wood hyacinth, tucked up against the stones in the Library Garden: frost-burnt leaves but bravely blooming nonetheless.

Another shot of the Breadbasket, and my very plain-faced house. Here you can see, from the left, the bean tower and the tomato stakes.

Everything in these photos looks like a stereotype of grim New England. We have to hunt hard for our beauties in March. In two months this space will be filled with vines and flowers, and the house will be less bleak. But it sure does look like a Frost poem now.

All evening and all night, rain and sleet and fat wet snowflakes. This morning, the world is brown and sopping and cold and early-spring magnificent . . . which is to say, none of that damn snow stuck, just as I'd predicted. Plus, my garden has been launched!

I spent a big chunk of yesterday arranging the vertical architecture: pounding in tomato stakes, setting bean and pea and cucumber trellises. It's way too early to plant most of these vegetables; but given my tiny space, I had to lay out the structure for the entire summer before I began sowing the first beds.

Once that was done, I moved forward into my first open-air planting. (I've already got arugula sprouting in the cold frame.) In the raised beds, under new row covers, I sowed spinach and chard. Around the uncovered edges I sowed more spinach and also radishes, and I planted peas along the zig-zags of the new compact pea trellis. This spring I'm working hard to increase vertical cultivation as I want to make room for a few in-ground potatoes. (I haven't had much luck with production in the potato bags.) I already do a lot of close planting, succession planting, interplanting; and a greater emphasis on trellising will significantly save space. I'll try to remember to take a picture today, to show you the bare bones of Garden 2023.

Miniature farming is extremely interesting, far more than I expected it to be when I moved here. In my front yard I've got excellent southern exposure and a longer growing season than I used to have, combined with city vulnerabilities (dogs, trash, highly compressed space, urban invasions: that stupid groundhog, those delinquent squirrels, the looming possibilities of rats and vandals and street construction, etc., etc.). Nonetheless, the project has a dollhouse fun: how can I transform a postage stamp into a thriving cottage and kitchen garden? As always, I am full of hope in the spring.

Already, I've brought some "harvests" into the house: a handful of green-onion sprouts, some wintered-over spinach. But it's March in Maine, and I don't have a greenhouse. I feel completely justified in crowing over my teeny-tiny crops.

I had a lovely sleep-in this morning, punctuated by a dream about my sister and a parade and a pesty baby bear and a turret full of chickens. (No chickens were murdered by bears in this dream; they merely flapped and squawked.)

Today, Saturday, hurray! I know we're supposed to get a skim of snow this evening, but I nonetheless plan to treat today as a gardening day. Yesterday I did a bunch of raking; today I'll finish that chore and start prepping garden beds for planting and setting up my new pea trellis. The snow will be insignificant, if it's even snow at all. I am feeling very confident in spring.

Yesterday was such a busy day . . . editing, of course, but also a phone meeting about an upcoming event, and I started outlining two different April classes, and I wrote a page of an amorphous essay about how time is addressed both within individual poems and over the arc of a poet's career. I am very, very pressed, work-wise. I know I'll have to work this weekend too--prepping for a video session, catching up on Donne, probably doing more class designing--but the garden is my number-one priority today. I need to get my hands into that dirt.

I do have some news to share with you. Maine's current poet laureate, Julia Bouwsma, is launching, along with the Maine Arts Commission and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, an endeavor called WriteME--a statewide project focusing on sharing epistolary poems: that is, poems that feel like personal letters. The idea is that people around Maine, poets and non-poets, will be matched to write to one another . . . sort of like poetic penpals.

To kick off the project, the administrators will be offering a series of free workshops in which interested people will learn more about what epistolary poems are and get a chance to write a few themselves. These workshops are open to anyone: you do not have to live in Maine. Anyone also includes teenagers, so if you have students, by all means encourage them to participate.

There will be five hour-and-a-half workshops offered in April: three live, and two on zoom. Richard Blanco and I will be teaching the zoom classes. Valerie Lawson, Maya Williams, and meg willing will be offering in-person workshops in various parts of the state. 

Remember: these are free and you don't need to know squat about writing poems. You just need to be excited and curious! I hope you can join us.

It was a chilly day yesterday, with a lot of fog and a little rain. I worked, I cleaned bathrooms, I scraped the ashes out of the stove, and when T got home from work we went out to his opening, which was packed, I am glad to say. Afterward we trudged up the hill and went out to dinner, where we spent most of the meal staring at the cinematically lit 7/11 across the street, imagining various David Lynch-like scenarios involving the silhouetted customers and the come-and-go vehicles. 

Today: meetings and class planning; also, editing; also, exercise class; maybe yardwork if the weather softens. A week ago I was getting ready to leave for Chicago, and I feel a little mournful now, missing my young people. Fortunately, another set of young people will be here in a few weeks, and I will be temporarily assuaged. But never permanently assuaged.

Yesterday was the first day of spring chores. I spent an hour or so in the afternoon picking up sticks, then pruned rosebushes, the clematis vine, and the little summersweet shrubs. Today it's supposed to rain, but if it doesn't, I'll do some raking. It felt so good to be outside, peering under leaves, checking on new growth, celebrating how much the crocuses have spread in the backyard, worrying a little about the garden near the cut-down tree, which was rather trampled by arborists. I love, love, love spring gardening. Every day is a new excitement.

Today, back to ye olde desk, but tonight, instead of going to my poetry salon, I'm going to the opening of T's photo show, at Cove Street Arts, here in Portland. His pieces are all studio portraits of trash he picked out of our roadside ditch in Harmony. I find them very beautiful and often comic and always sad and ominous. 

Otherwise, what have I been doing? Trying to reacclimate myself to home, fiddling with a poem draft, fretting about the obligations of national poetry month, reading Lincoln in the Bardo and feeling intensely sad, listening to spring-training baseball while making curry, wishing wishing wishing in a heartstring kind of way . . . wishing.

Yesterday was so tedious--chore after chore after chore--that I almost bailed and didn't go to my poetry group in the evening. But then I thought better of it, and went anyway, which turned out to be a good decision, as at least I ended the day feeling as if I had some carbonation in my bloodstream.

Today I'll reprise some of that tedium, but I got the house stuff out of my hair; so once I finish work, I can go outside and inaugurate spring with some rosebush pruning and stick gathering and leaf raking . . . which sounds like doing chores but will be much more satisfying. At this time of the year, even picking up sticks has its delights . . . fresh air, new blooms, outdoor cat hilarity, and the simple physical release of bending and lifting.

My arugula has sprouted in the cold frame--speckles of green in black soil. Three crocuses have opened in the garden. I cut the first green onion and garlic chive sprouts. This weekend I think I'll be able to plant radishes. Spring has arrived in the little northern city by the sea . . . unless winter decides that it hasn't.

Meanwhile, I am rereading Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo, reading Baron Wormser's poetry collection The History Hotel for the first time, still pecking away at Donne poems, fretting about the upcoming classes I need to prep for, reminding myself to make chicken curry for dinner . . . my little Chicago vacation is fading away under the obligations of the day, but the good feeling remains, the dear children, the cold wind against my knees, three fat cats staring at me benignly and a stage filled with dancers, the painful, glorious beauty of bodies in motion . . .

 I write to you from my everyday couch corner in my little living room in my little house in my little city by the sea. My trip to Chicago was everything I'd hoped it would be: intense and easy time with my young people, a stunning experience at the ballet, lots of unplanned meandering, delicious meals, and, to top off the fine weekend, my brain sparked a thesis for the essay I'm getting ready to write. If I tell you that my suitcase was the very first one off the luggage carousel in Boston, you will understand that good luck has indeed been fluttering over me.

Today I must return to the regular old world, sadly bereft of sons and their beautiful friends, and with far too much housework and desk work stacked up and waiting for me. On the other hand, the snow has disappeared from my garden, and my cat and my husband and my bed were glad to see me, and I have nothing to complain about, not one thing to complain about.

 Just a quick note . . . I am in the airport waiting for my flight east. Talk to you tomorrow.

 It was so cold in Chicago yesterday--windy, in the teens for much of the morning, and then warming to an un-warming 25 or so. So J decided we should go to the Garfield Park Conservatory and wander around the 1910s-era greenhouses . . . palms and giant ferns and exotic flame-colored ground covers and and breadfruit trees and mangroves and, unexpectedly, a room stuffed with every-color azaleas and daffodils and roses and daisies and tulips, an artificial temperate spring, very hallucinatory, especially when combined with the snow squall that smacked us in the face as soon as we opened the outside door.

This trip has been everything I hope it would be: loosely planned activities, lots of walking and unexpected conversations, varieties of delicious food (so far, an avocado, kale, and egg bagel sandwich made by the kids; a fantastic meat and pickled-veg sandwich from an long-established Italian deli; very spicy Thai takeout from around the corner), Scrabble and card games and chatter and cat goofiness. It has been so cozy and comfortable, and also very, very much like not being at work.

This afternoon: the ballet. Tonight: 5 Rabinitos, my very favorite neighborhood Mexican restaurant. In between times, reading and reading and playing with cats and mooning out the window and reading some more and being so glad I'm here.

I write to you from the wilds of Chicago, where it is 6:30 a.m. and my body is highly confused by the combination of daylight savings and central time. Currently a cat named Krusty is attempting to walk on my head, so pardon any typos. From my window I see dark gray clouds scudding across a pale gray sky; I see the brick chimney of a sausage factory, the backs of row houses, a line of bare trees twitching in a cold wind. It's very cold here--13 degrees--and last night, as we walked through the neighborhood, the breeze tore up pant legs and down collars, and British meat pies for dinner seemed like manna.

Today I think we're going to the Garfield Park Conservatory, just so we can see some green and pretend our boots aren't full of ice. Otherwise, I have no idea what we'll be doing, and that is fine. I'm just so glad to be here, even if this cat is treating me like a yoga mat.

This morning I take off on my brief adventure . . . first, a bus to Boston, then a plane to Chicago, and then J will meet me at the airport and we will be so glad to see each other!

Yesterday was so messy and disorganized, but I did manage to mostly get my packing done . . . though I have yet to stow the extremely heavy scavenged doorknob sets that Tom is sending to J for his apartment renovation. This is what happens when you are the liaison between two builders with a penchant for free stuff: you have to drag lock sets through airports. Let us hope that TSA doesn't get all hot and bothered about them.

I still have not yet finished the most important, and difficult, element of packing: how many books shall I bring? So far I have three: two collections of poetry (Teresa's and Baron's, because I'm going to be writing about them), plus the Saunders book I've been reading. But poetry books are short, and I'm two-thirds of the way through the Saunders, and what if I run out of things to read??? This is always my horror story, and so, of course, I always bring too many books, and my family members always roll their eyes and make pointed jokes about it.

But, honestly. Running out of things to read?? What a terrible idea.

It's supposed to be cold in Chicago, a low of 14, I'm sorry to say, but I intend to do all of the things anyway . . . whatever they are, as the only plan I've made is to see the Joffrey Ballet on Sunday. Mostly I'm just excited to be with J, in his new place. And I love Chicago . . . the flat streets, the brick buildings painted with Mexican-style murals, the strange sunken yards, the alleys and their pigeons, the mysterious Catholic icon stores with the display windows blurred like broken eyeglasses, the rattling El lines, the puzzling empty lots and the occasional rooster crow, the skyline of chimneys and the haze of downtown, midnight bursts of mariachi, the air filled with languages I don't speak, and then the lake, gray and pancake-flat, lapping at the feet of the city.

T forgot to set his alarm so we are late this morning, and discombobulated. Outside, a fat waning crescent is parked over the neighbors' chimney. Inside, I am trying to sort out what kind of day I need to have. Yesterday's teaching plan was a bust: only one kid showed up for class, so zooming with him all day made no sense. Instead, I ended up back with the giant editing project, and did make some progress there, which takes some pressure off today. I'll still spend time at my desk, but I also need to prep for Chicago and do some house stuff, and I've got a meeting in the afternoon, maybe two.

But, hurray, Chicago! I am so, so looking forward to this weekend with my kid, in his new place, with his new cats and new partner. We will eat magnificent local Mexican food, and we will walk around the city for hours, and we will watch silly things on TV, and on Sunday we will go to the ballet . . . it will all be beautiful.

Today, however: deleting sentences, cleaning toilets, arguing with Donne. At least I can offer you this, from George Saunders:

There is a big moment for any artist . . . when we have to decide whether to accept a work of art that we have to admit we weren’t in control of as we made it and of which we’re not entirely sure we approve. It is less, less than we wanted it to be, and yet it’s more, too—it’s small and a bit pathetic, judged against the work of the great masters, but there it is, all ours.

What we have to do at that point, I think, is go over, sheepishly but boldly, and stand on our shit-hill, and hope it will grow.

And—to belabor this already questionable metaphor—what will make that shit-hill grow is our commitment to it, the extent to which we say, “Well, yes, it is a shit-hill, but it’s my shit-hill, so let me assume that if I continue to work in this mode that is mine, this hill will eventually stop being made of shit, and will grow, and from it, I will eventually be able to see (and encompass in my work) the whole world.

It turned out to be an odd storm, at least for us. Inland got actual accumulation, but we mostly had a day of rain snow sleet rain freezing rain snow, and this morning there are only a few inches of hard crust on the ground. The whole things got such a late start that snow didn't even begin till mid-afternoon up north. So it felt wiser not to drive this morning, given that I don't know what I'd be driving into, or even if schools will be opening on time.

And thus, zoom. Sigh. But oh well. We'll be focusing on ancient Chinese poets today, and also working on some performance practice, which I think we can do via the computer. I hate that I can't be in the classroom, but, man, this weather. It just won't let up.

Thus far, we have no weather at all, other than an odd swirling wind. Nonetheless, every school in southern Maine is canceled, so something is on the way; maybe just anxiety but probably not. In short, I am not driving to Monson today. Either I'll go up for class first thing tomorrow morning, or I'll zoom again . . . and given that this storm seems to be running late, I suspect the latter.

Today I'll be hanging out at home, waiting for more snow, more wind, more rain, more garbagy mixed precip, maybe even some thrilling tree damage and power outages. This has been quite a March in the little city by the sea. Up north they get flurries. Down here we get wet gales and feet of sodden paste.

I'll be editing at my desk, as long as the power holds out. If it doesn't, I'll be reading and writing by the wood stove and attempting to warm up tea water and leftovers on its tiny lid.

Thank goodness for dry firewood, for a pencil and a notebook, for fat poems and a couch blanket. All praise to teacups and candles and flashlights with working batteries. Sing to the roof and the walls, to the trees that don't fall, to the seabirds huddled in the cove and the cat coiled in his chair, to four-wheel-drive vehicles and a good shovel. Let us celebrate boots and thick socks, knit hats and dry gloves, and the kindly neighbor who snowblows your sidewalk while you're curled in a chair, biting a pen and thinking about punctuation. Remember the seeds, under their opalescent sky, under their thawing soil. They won't forget the sun. You won't either.

This week was already shaping up to be a sloppy mess, work- and travel-wise, and now yet another giant wet snowstorm is primed to slam Portland tonight and tomorrow, just when I'm supposed to be driving north to teach. It's quite aggravating.

Well, grousing will do no good, so I will attempt to stop. On the bright side the weather looks like it will behave itself for my trip to Chicago on Friday. And if I have to zoom-teach again on Wednesday, oh well. In the meantime I'll be back to editing, exercise class, laundry, and other such obligations. I bought a pretty blue sweater on sale over the weekend. I got a ton of reading done and prepped for my class, in whatever form it will take. T and I went for a walk, and I planted arugula in the cold frame, and I saw crocuses in other people's front yards, and I enjoyed the long daylight evening. Spring is almost here, no matter what these stupid snowstorms think.

I'm very much enjoying the Saunders book on Russian short-story models. Though his focus is prose, what he's saying feels pertinent to poems as well, and I like how he avoids jargon such as plot and rising action and such and sticks closely to the writer-reader connection:

We might think of a story this way: the reader is sitting in the sidecar of a motorcycle the writer is driving.  In a well-told story, reader and writer are so close together that they're one unit. My job as the writer is to keep the distance between motorcycle and sidecar small, so that when I go right, you go right. When I, at the end of the story, take the motorcycle off the cliff, you have no choice but to follow. (I haven't, so far, given you any reason to distance yourself from me.) If the space between motorcycle and sidecar gets too great, when I corner, you fail to hear about it, and fall out of relationship with me and get bored or irritated and stop reading and go off to watch a movie.

I slept late this morning, and then I was day-light-savingsed, and as a result it is apparently 7:30 a.m. and I am just pulling myself into consciousness. I had a fantastic early-morning dream about living in a commune and wearing a remarkable blue-flowered pantsuit and having a clingy annoying boyfriend and making eyes at a Rolling Stone across the room (though he did not look like any of the actual Stones). I have no idea who the bad boyfriend was, but that pantsuit! My god.

I find this dream hilarious as it has nothing nostalgic about it at all. I am too young to have experienced communes and pantsuits, except as a small-child hanger-on, and the Stones were always old guys. But my brain decided to take me on a historical tour, and I wish I could fully explain that remarkable outfit. Giant blue flowers on a blue background. The material was knitted Orlon or something of the sort, and it was quite close-fitting, though it didn't have a neckline plunge. I've never seen anything like it, and never will again.

I didn't end up planting arugula yesterday, so that's on the docket for today. I got busy sorting and organizing seeds packets, and then I had to go to the bookstore and the grocery store, and then I had to buy socks, and then I got sucked into the books I was reading and the day sailed past me. I'll get those seeds in today, and I need to prep for Monson too, but, ugh, the weather forecast.

I'm still reading Talty's Night of the Living Rez and will probably finish it soon. The stories are deeply sad, and though I am not Native, the book is so familiar in so many ways . . . it's set in central Maine, on Indian Island in Old Town, just north of Bangor, and the young men and their mothers are painfully real to me. I've also started reading George Saunders's A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, which collects several classic Russian short stories and uses them as the basis of a master class on writing. A poet friend of mine had recommended it, so I decided to. I don't read craft books very often, but I was intrigued by the idea of its structure.

So that's what I'm up to: dreaming, dithering, diving . . . and the sun is shining, and I get to drink two cups of coffee this morning, and this time next week I will be writing to you from the Windy City which is a lovely nickname even if it's not always true.

This has been a long work week, and I am glad to see Saturday. After sleeping a little late, now I am admiring the pale whitish light of morning, a sky almost the color of the snow piles, the punctuation marks of birds.

Today is the day I plant arugula in the cold frame--first crop of the season, though the wintered-over spinach is still bright against the crusty soil. Otherwise, it will be a soft and shapeless day--maybe baseball this afternoon; maybe I'll work on those Donne poems. Tomorrow I'll need to do class prep for Monson, but not today, not today.

Next week will be nuts--a trip north to teach, foul weather on the horizon, various meetings and responsibilities, and then on Friday I'll fly to Chicago for a long weekend with my older son.

But I will not have to carry War and Peace on the plane because I have finished it . . . yet another reading of the big guy chalked up in the unremembered history of my life. I should have a special stick notched for each reading, but it's too late to start that tradition now. This is the fifth time? the sixth time? Who knows. All I can say is that Tolstoy has been part of my life since I was twelve years old, that I have struggled with it my entire life, and adored it, and I expect I'll read it again before I die.

Now I've started Morgan Talty's story collection Night of the Living Rez, and I should get back to Watchmen, which I put on hiatus during the W&P experience. I have Baron Wormser's new poetry collection, The History Hotel, but I may save it for the plane. There's so much to read; there's always so much to read.

My younger son has suggested a reading project for this summer--that we undertake Anna Karenina together--and of course I am delighted, of course I am thrilled. My children have grown up to be people who want to read Tolstoy with me! How did I get so lucky? Already he and I are texting back and forth about the Talty collection, which he has finished and I have just started. My father-in-law writes to me about books; my friend Angela writes to me about books; my mother and I discuss books. I undertake hard reading projects with my friend Teresa, and my nephew gives me graphic novels and demands that I talk to him about them. O this world of letters. It is like love.

Two years ago I planted snowdrops in my backyard. Yesterday I caught sight of the first blooms. Most of the yard is still under snow, but in two places there is just enough melt for the flowers to unfold from the leaves. I'm very excited as I thought these bulbs were duds. Not a snowdrop appeared last spring; it seems they were saving themselves for this season. The catalog assured me they would eventually naturalize--that is, spread in clumps around the yard; and now I am back to daydreams of drifts of white flowers in the snow. 

I'm determined to plant arugula in the cold frame this weekend. Next weekend I'll be in Chicago, so now is the time, though I'll have to dig out a walkway for myself if I want to get close enough to water the seeds. The snow is receding from the big garden (by which I mean "big" garden; everything is proportionate in this tiny homestead), and I can see garlic shoots, green-onion shoots, chive shoots. Tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths are in leaf along the house foundation, but most of the flowerbeds are still heaped with snow.

I am itching to get started . . . even picking up sticks and pruning roses would be better than nothing, but there's no point until we get rid of more snow. 

Today I'll park myself at my desk again and crank out more pages of work. I've also got to do housework--bathrooms and floors and such. I've got to deal with the recycling and undergo my exercise class and wash sheets and and and and. For dinner I'll make chicken fricassee with olives and lemon, and baked polenta, and sautéed bok choi. And maybe I'll get a chance to moon over the poem drafts I worked on yesterday night. We had a beautiful group at the salon--ten writers, a universe of thoughts. It is exhilarating to be part of this enterprise.

A big moon hangs over the little northern city by the sea. Beneath it, the snow dregs gleam, and when I open the back door to let the cat out, the scent of earth is strong and cold and wet.

I work away at my work. But always there's that moon and that earth, whether I notice them or not.

First light unfolds--pale blues and greys, a skim of coral. Already the inky tree silhouettes have returned to mild-mannered bark and branch, and the moon hides behind a chimney.

I am winding down with War and Peace. The French have straggled away. The Russians have returned to burned-out Moscow. The dead are buried, and the living have discovered that they are still alive.

Meanwhile, the clouds spread their rosy cloak over my city. My city yawns and scuffles into its slippers. Seagulls veer and dive over a rippled bay. A cat washes a paw in a pool of lamplight.

* * *

Pierre . . . did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and, loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.

--Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace 

 * * *

Westron wynde, when wyll thow blow
The smalle rayne downe can rayne?
Cryst yf my love were in my armys,
And I yn my bed agayne!

 --anonymous, early sixteenth century

* * *

A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown

Walt Whitman

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,
A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,
Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,
Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building,
We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building,
’Tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu hospital.
Entering but for a minute I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made,
Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps,
And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and clouds of smoke,
By these, crowds, groups of forms vaguely I see on the floor, some in the pews laid down,
At my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen,)
I stanch the blood temporarily, (the youngster’s face is white as a lily,)
Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o’er the scene fain to absorb it all,
Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead,
Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the odor of blood,
The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also fill’d,
Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweating,
An occasional scream or cry, the doctor’s shouted orders or calls,
The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches,
These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell the odor,
Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, fall in;
But first I bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a half-smile gives he me,
Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the darkness,
Resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,
The unknown road still marching.

 

Though the temperature was above freezing and there was visible melting, yesterday was one of those days when I couldn't get warm. Raw, my mother calls such days. Still, I made myself go for a brisk walk, head down into the wind, and I admired the tough little snowdrops peeking out of the ice crust, and I scraped the snow off my cold frame and encouraged it to imagine spring.

I feel as if I'm writing the same post day after day--desk work desk work desk work--but that's always the story of a giant editing job. I can't really write to you about the actual details of the work because it involves someone else's not-yet-published manuscript, so all I can do is [insert generalized work talk here] and leave you with the hazy sense that [Dawn is busy].

I've been copyediting for more than 30 years now. It has given me a paycheck through my years of distraction--homesteading, child rearing, the pandemic--and in many ways has been the frame that has allowed me to cultivate a personal writing life. I've learned a number of things from copyediting: close attention to syntax and sentence movement, the importance of visual accuracy (e.g., capitalization and punctuation), and how visual accuracy may translate into sonic accuracy (via punctuation and other sorts of pause). Being a copyeditor is kind of like playing scales and etudes: without personal commitment, I work my way through the minutiae of the language; I find patterns and disruptions; I make quick decisions about clarity and repetition. All of this has served as a training ground for my own poetry and prose.

And yet.

After 30-some years on the job, I've outstripped myself. I'm no longer an apprentice writer, and copyediting is always the same job: fix up the sentences. The scales and etudes comparison no longer feels particularly useful, and the job swells into my writing and teaching time. But I still don't earn enough to quit it, and so I don't. And there are things I like about it: the surprise of a fascinating book, conversations with the press staff or an intriguing author. 

And yet.

Well, we all have these kinds of obligations, and at least I can do this one in slippers and an old sweater. As commercial word-work goes, it's way better for me than promotional brochures and ad copy would have been. I primarily work on academic manuscripts so I always learn something I didn't know before. And poets always have to have a real job. Things could be worse: I could be like Sir Walter Ralegh and have to work as a free-lance mercenary and colonizing treasure hunter. That would really suck.

Though the weather hasn't been especially warm, there's been a lot of melting since Saturday's big storm. Already bare ground is visible on the south side of the house, and I can glimpse tulip and hyacinth leaves forking upward amid the leaf mulch.

I'm not full of exciting chatter today. Yesterday was just what I expected it to be: work and groceries, neither of which was scintillating. But the wind blew hard all day, thumping against the little house and roaring in the maples. Gulls fought for air space; a strange cat prowled through the yard; a pair of red squirrels chased each other across the back fence.

Today will be another big work day, but I will get out for a walk in the afternoon. Everyone else is seeing exciting raptor stuff, but not me, and I want some hawk sightings.

Meanwhile, the furnace grumbles and the laundry sloshes and I sigh over a cup of coffee. I am itching to plant something, and maybe I'll be able to clean the snow off the cold frame and get arugula seeds into the ground by this weekend. My skier friends are all Yay yay more snow, and I am, like, hey, spring, hurry up and give me crocuses and garlic greens. March is a disputative month.

I have a brand-new pea trellis to install. I have new sturdy row covers to foil the groundhog and the insects. I have a fresh batch of seeds, and I am eager to get this garden party started.

And here's Monday, back again so soon, the pest. Ah, well. I had a peaceable weekend and am refreshed for the editorial fray. The extra day I took last Friday was extremely helpful. Now I've got two finished poem drafts, and I even managed to send out submissions this weekend, along with a newsletter. I cogitated over my Donne homework, and I made a big dent in War and Peace, even though it was a part I was dreading (too many beloved characters die or damage themselves). I listened to two Red Sox spring training games and was pleasantly surprised at how scrappy my team is so far. I made bread and vegetable soup; I shoveled a lot of snow; I yacked with my sons; I fell asleep on the couch in the middle of a sunny afternoon.

Today, back to the grind: exercise class, then editing editing editing, then grocery shopping, now that I can get the car out of the driveway. This will be another long week at the desk, but the snowstorms seem to have blown themselves out for the moment, and every day the temps will rise into the 40s, so there should be much dripping and melting.

In Brooklyn,  P has joined a Saturday birders' club and excitedly told me about the merlin and the Cooper's hawk he saw in Prospect Park. Here in Portland T saw a red-tail with a rat in his talons, and another local friend watched a red-tail eating a smaller bird. I have been listening to a cardinal sing its "Jericho, Jericho, Jericho" song, and the bay is scattered with buffleheads and eiders. The birds are on the move, and they are hungry, and they are hungry for love.

Spring in the little northern city by the sea: and this is the view from the front window of my house.

We got 8 to 10 inches of snow yesterday . . . the measurement was hard to figure because the flakes immediately packed down hard into a massive wet brick. Inland, the totals were higher because the snow was fluffier, but ours was like Crisco.

It was perfect snowman snow, however, and I had fun making a small Martian to sit outside my kitchen window.

Today, temperatures are supposed to warm, and the neighborhood will echo with drips and splashes and the streets will be slush and my mailbox will fill with snowmelt and all of tomorrow's mail will need to be hung on the line to dry.

Already the sun is shining and the sky is bright blue and snow is starting to slip-slide off the tree branches. By afternoon my snow Martian will be crooked and sad.

I don't have any solid plans for the day. I might start making another hand-sewn book. I might bake bread. I might read the poems of John Donne. I might tinker with my new drafts. It's a pleasant feeling to be aimless, because this coming week will be yet another slog.

Oddly, despite the snow, the day does feel springlike. If I were in Harmony, I'd go hang out with a friend and watch the sap boil. Or I'd snowshoe into the woods with my hat off and my coat unzipped and listen for the barred owls courting among the spruce trees. These brilliant March skies tug at the heart.

I woke up to the sound of the snowplow, then fell asleep again, dreaming I had fallen asleep driving, which was distressing, until I figured out that I had never been in a vehicle at all but had been in bed the whole time.

And now I am awake, with a fire freshly lit and coffee freshly brewed and snow freshly smothering my little seaside city. We are getting socked, and the storm has only just begun.

I'm in a pretty good mood this morning . . . I'm spending a loosey-goosey Saturday in a clean house with my beloved; my little stomach adventure seems to have dissipated; and I talked myself into devoting yesterday to my own poems, not to other people's manuscripts. After all, as I argued with myself, I just got a grant specifically paying me to write instead of work for someone else. Thus, I am required to waste an entire day dithering over ampersands. It's the law.

I'm so glad I did, as both of my new drafts are making me happy. I really need to find time to begin sorting this giant sack of poems into book form, but making them is so exciting that I don't want to imagine ending the project. Also, I ought to send them out to journals, but blah. I wish someone would come to me and say, Can I look at a sheaf of these pieces? And I would say yes, please, and both of our jobs would be easier. But that's not how publishing works.

In the meantime, the air is thick with snow--swirling, dense, purposeful. This is no flurry; it's an onslaught, and I am looking forward to listening to spring training baseball this afternoon, as the drifts pile and the plows scrape and the neighborhood kids shriek.

I've got to work on a newsletter today, and I need to read Donne. Those are my only obligations, beyond laundry and cooking and stoking the stove. Last night I made a beautiful Greek-style pizza, with a thick Sicilian crust, leftover braised lamb, red pepper and purple onion, spinach, tomato, farmer's cheese, and fresh mint. Tonight's menu: baked chicken; cottage-cheese dumplings; and a beet, orange and pecan salad.

By the way, the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching is now open for applications! Please share far and wide with anyone, teacher or otherwise, who might benefit from a week of intense conversations about poetry as civil and emotional discourse. Guest faculty are the magnificent Tina Cane and Teresa Carson, and we will be in person at Robert Frost's home in Franconia, New Hampshire.

Friday morning; another pre-storm day. Southern Maine is supposed to get 8 to 18 inches tomorrow, last I heard, and I am happily planning to go nowhere.

This has been a busy week, and I might allow myself a bit of a breather today. I've got housework to do; of course, the editing goes on and on; but I've also been slightly under the weather for the past couple of days . . . not enough sleep and a little gastro-intestinal upset, and I feel like maybe I ought to coddle myself just a bit, until I can shake my body back into order.

Last night at the salon, despite not feeling 100 percent, I wrote two decent draft blurts, and I'd like to spend time with them today. I need to start working on my John Donne homework so that I can talk to Teresa about it. I've got various non-editing desk things to sort out, and I really need to clean the floors.

Yesterday the movers came and hoisted T's 250-pound printer up the stairs into his study . . . two massive, cheerful young men, curious about what the machine was for, cozy with my cat, showing me photos of their cats. After they left, I remembered again how much I miss my own young people. It is hard having them so far away, and this stupid March snow pattern had better not mess with my trip to Chicago.

I had a bad night's sleep--uncomfortable from a sore hip and fractured by various cat/partner disruptions--and now I am blinky and slightly crabby and waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in. Ah, well. Such is middle-aged life.

Outside, a bit of drizzle is filming the packed new snow. We're supposed to have rain and sleet all day, then another round of accumulating snow tomorrow night into Saturday. March is tearing into Maine full tilt.

Today I'll be working at my desk, until the movers show up to tote T's massive new photo printer up the stairs into his study. Then I'll be back at my desk again, and dreaming of going out to the salon to write tonight, if my lack of sleep doesn't suddenly nail me to the couch.

I had a zoom meeting yesterday evening with two writers, Meg Kearney and Catherine Parnell, about a conversation about writing we've agreed to record later this spring. It was just a brainstorming session: what to talk about, how to organize it, how to prep, and so on. Meanwhile, the house filled with the scent of the braised Moroccan lamb I'd hustled into the oven before our meeting, and I kept thinking to myself, How did I get here? It is still so hard for me to believe that I actually grew up to be a real writer, that I can sit around and talk with other real writers like an equal. I mean, it's crazy, really.

This spring I'll be recording that talk, teaching at Monson Arts, teaching a generative writing class for Maine Writers and Publishers, teaching a chapbook class for the Frost Place, teaching an epistolary poetry class for a Maine poet laureate project, helping to run a free community workshop with my writing salon, plus editing a biography, plus editing another book whose subject I don't know yet, plus working on poems for my next collection (thanks to an American Rescue Plan/NEA grant), plus prepping for the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching, plus doing a close reading of John Donne's poems with Teresa Carson, plus flying to Chicago . . . plus gardening, plus housework, plus cooking, plus laundry, plus family. I am not even going to reread this paragraph. I might lose my mind.

But for the moment I am sitting still. So there's that.

I did zoom-teach my Monson kids yesterday, which was not nearly as fun as usual but better than not seeing them at all. In Portland it snowed all day and into the night, so not being trapped in the north was clearly the correct decision. Still, my teaching day felt kind of blah, compared to what it usually is.

Today will be a mixed-up mess, work-wise: a morning Frost Place meeting, then editing, then an evening meeting with two other writers about a video conversation we've been asked to record for Cervena Barva Press. Plus, exercise class and grocery shopping; plus, trying to fit dinner prep around the evening meeting . . . Just thinking about my schedule makes me feel like an ant lugging a giant crumb.

But I am not stuck in a snowbank beside the highway. That does make everything better.