And here's my old nemesis Monday again.

But, to be fair, she arrives on the heels of a quiet weekend. Nor do I have to drive north to teach this week. So I don't really have any complaints about her, other than the 5 a.m. alarm.

Today I'll start working on the first of two small manuscript jobs: one's a poetry chapbook ms I'm advising on; the other's an academic article that needs copyediting. I have to prep for tomorrow's reading in Lewiston, I hope to do some work in the garden, and I want to mix up a batch of honey-vanilla frozen yogurt. I need to do laundry and endure my exercise regimen. I need to make Portuguese kale soup and an asparagus salad. I want to read some George Herbert poems and Anne Carson's "The Glass Essay." I'm hoping to pick up my new glasses this week, hoping to get a haircut, hoping that the clothes I've ordered actually fit me. Within the past week my best pair of jeans self-destructed, the knees went out in my only decent pair of dress pants, and I had to order new hiking shoes to replace the boots I'd worn down to skeletons. I'm a tattery mess.

On the other hand, I'm alive and cheerful, and I wore out the boots because I went on so many long walks in them, and those dress pants were at least 10 years old and they still looked okay on me. That's a small miracle right there.

* * *

I want

 

to skip up the street to buy bread I want to skip down to the DMV to read the eyechart I want to be the weirdo who skips up behind you in line at the movies and pokes you in the back and says What a beautiful hat I want to kiss wildly in public places I want to embrace trees and no-parking signs I want to swim far out into a deep lake and wear red lipstick and stomp in the mud I want to be loud and dizzy that big clumsy happy woman at the party oblivious to herself smiling a little and humming dancing her pigeon-wing shuffle alone in the corner and I want you to be there and I want you to be glad I came

(from Calendar by Dawn Potter [Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming])