The rain poured all night, and already the cat has been in and out through the back door three times this morning, shocked by the wet, compelled by the scintillating thaw. It is hard to imagine that winter will return this year, though I could easily be wrong. Winter has a way of digging in its claws. But everywhere in Portland tree buds are swelling and flower spikes are greening and patches of lank dead grass are beginning to shimmer.

Today's big project is to bake a lemon layer cake for tonight's poetic baby shower. Probably I'll also work on some conference planning, and I need to clean the upstairs rooms, and I'll keep chipping away at revisions and reading contest entries. Though, as always, I dreaded asking, I did quickly manage to coax two friends into writing cover blurbs for the new collection--a giant relief. Nothing makes me feel more like a wallflower at a party than having to creep onto the dance floor and ask somebody to write a blurb for my book. It's awful . . . though afterward, when the invited ones say yes, I am always jubilant, as if I've managed to evade the Minotaur in his own maze.

Anyway, that's over now, and I can concentrate on the manageable: fixing typos, correcting acknowledgments, compiling cover copy. All of my experience as a copyeditor does come in handy during the production process. I'm fussy about page design, fonts, Chicago Manual of Style recommendations, etc., but I'm also able to solve problems, and avoid them, and I know how to professionally proofread, how to mark corrections clearly, how to respond to a manuscript quickly and efficiently. And there's a satisfaction in getting to use these skills on my own books, not just in service of other people's manuscripts.

* * *

The rain is still thumping and rattling against the windows. The furnace is humming. The cat is drying off on a chair. 

I went on two long walks yesterday--one alone before breakfast, one with a friend before dinner. It is hard to stay inside in the spring. I am like the cat . . . I can't resist the scent of wind.

Here's a poem from the new collection, about that very thing--

* * *

Air

Dawn Potter

 

I could see nothing but air on air on

            all sides, nothing but warm impossible

space and the whole of the beast I was on:

That floats and swims and wheels and descends

            slowly as departure, a series of

            departures, into the breath of the rising

Wind.

 

—Dante, The Inferno

 

A sigh,

exasperation or sorrow. A breath, long

and slow; a wheeze, harsh as bricks.

The cough, below stairs, of a woman

 

who will die in a year; wail

of a newborn, who will die in ten.

A breeze over the sea, waves

as high as museums, waves as wide

 

as cornfields, waves as deep as the tale

Homer sang one night, while a goat

bled out in the courtyard and slave women

whispered in the olive grove.

 

A wind, whining across the plains, whining

against the empty, glittering tracks, against the first

railroad cars, against the raw new towns,

against the cities of industry, against the interstate

 

highway, against the steel walls of semi-trailers.

Battering against the penitentiaries and the churches:

a gale, scented with blood, with jasmine, with rot,

with mornings, with butter and bacon

 

and the snow-tracks of sparrows. A gust,

sifting the alleys of your ancient fortress, fingering

your stripped meadows, your pine forests, your empty sky.

Snare it, pin it to your breast, beg it to tear you away.

[from Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]