The house of poetry peers among the birches, down toward the lake. The lake is glass this morning, though the air flutters with life. Killdeer and red-winged blackbirds trill and screek, bullfrogs burp among the reeds, a hummingbird buzzes my head.

Though it's been very hot in Maine, lakeside life is breezy and welcoming. Late afternoon I slipped into the lake, into water a clear bright brown, ripples ripening in sunlight and shadow, a handful of idle poets splashing and musing under a bowl of sky.

Nothing has gone wrong. Nothing. The delight of the participants washes over me. "I'm in hog heaven," said a poet yesterday, leaning back into the lake, the lake leaning into her.

We'd spent a long intense day with Maudelle's magnificent wanderings among sound and meter and our brains' evolutionary miracles. Everyone is excited; everyone is inhaling deeply. The place is taking care of us. There is an extraordinary peace. It is not like Franconia. It is another world; it tugs away at the weariness in an entirely different way. But the poets still cast their spells, and their magic quivers.