Temperatures reached a high of 92 yesterday in the little northern city by the sea, and today is supposed to be worse. Early mornings are the only easy time to be outside, so that's when I've been taking my walks. And on yesterday's I found a scavenger's treasure on the curb: a heavy concrete birdbath with the patina of old sculpture . . . something that would cost a couple of hundred dollars new and be far less charmingly lichened. Obviously I could not carry the behemoth home without a car, so I hurried to my house and then hurried back in the Subaru, and was lucky enough to get there before the next person saw it. So now this lovely old monument rests in my torrid back garden.

I'll take another early walk this morning, though I don't expect the scavenging to be so good. Then, after hanging laundry and watering the potted plants, I'll hole up for the day. There's plenty of housework to do, and there are plenty of poems to work on. Yesterday I did final tweaks on a long one, then transcribed and revised two notebook drafts. Occasionally I'd step outside and amble through the hot shade, admire the slow drip of the birdbath, laugh at the cat splayed inside out under a bush. Then I'd return to the cave, to the words running wild amid the whir of the fans.

Thanks for the kind comments you left yesterday about the new poem. It was of course not an easy one to make . . . or, more exactly, it became itself despite the despair of making it.