I've just woken up from a very disturbing dream-visitation featuring a Harmony friend who was murdered more than a decade ago. In my dream I had no recollection of her actual fate: we were just two people walking sociably around a fair together (the fairground was my Harmony land), talking and laughing and watching our neighbors bustle among rides and buildings. But as soon as I woke, I was appalled.

So now I am sitting here in my couch corner with a weight on my heart. Poor tragic Amy. Her children were also murdered, but in my dream there were no children, neither hers nor mine. It was just the two of us and, far off, a glimpse of her father talking to Tom. "Let's go see your dad," I remember suggesting. We tried to make our way through the crowd. But we never got there before I woke up.

I should write to her mother about this visitation. If Amy has come back from the dead, even so fleetingly, her mother must be told.

Well, that dream will color the day, no question. Tom is going to take our photos this morning so that we can send in our passports for renewal. We are planning a midday picnic and stroll on the Diamond Islands. But in the meantime Amy will walk beside me across my lost land, and her father will never get to see her.

Good morning from the chilly Alcott House, a little late because Chuck woke me by climbing on my head at 2 a.m. and I ended up downstairs on the couch trying to recoup my lost hours . . . successfully, as it happened. Once we settled onto the couch, the kitten for some reason became docile and let me fall asleep and stay that way till 6:30. So I am well rested in a non-sequential way, thanks to the no-pressures of a Sunday morning.

It is the last day of August. Outside the sun is awake and shining vigorously, and 50-degree air creeps through the window I left open in the living room last night. My feet are cold, and Chuck's paws are cold on my neck, and if I had any sense I'd close that window. But the crisp freshness is such an uplift after months of limp heat. Cold feet are the price to pay for this clean sharp swirl, with its hint of winter and new apples.

Yesterday turned out to be a kitchen day. I made refrigerator pickles with sliced young cucumbers, a handful of shredded cabbage, and a few slivers of red onion. I processed green beans for the freezer. I marinated a lamb loin in white wine, garlic, lovage, thyme, and oregano. For dinner I seared the lamb, served it with caramelized Vidalia onions and fresh mint; potatoes roasted with sage and olive oil; and a tomato, basil, garlic, and breadcrumb salad. I baked chocolate-chip scones for dessert. Summer at its finest.

Today I'll cut another few herb bouquets for drying. I'll simmer a batch of tomatoes for sauce. I may process kale or chard for the freezer. It's so pleasant to spend morning hours in my pretty kitchen, so pleasant to come in from the garden, bowls piled high with produce.

As I worked yesterday, I thought about my upcoming Poetry Kitchen class--began puzzling out various scenarios for prompts and conversations, trying them out on myself, imagining them in the minds of participants. I got notice of another signup last night, meaning that there are now only two slots left. Clearly changing the date solved my slow registration problem, and I am only too glad to stop beating myself up for focusing on a topic that few people seemed to care about. This would have been my first class failure, and naturally I was prepared to excoriate myself. Fortunately I can now put that project off for another day.

Update: Now there's just ONE space left in the long-poem class. Make it yours?

After discussion, I have changed the dates of my upcoming Poetry Kitchen class on Whitman and the long poem. The original October date was a sticking point for several interested people, so the first weekend is now November 1 and 2; the second remains November 15 and 16. Already I've had a flurry of new sign-ups, and there are currently just three spaces left: grab one while you can.

I'm very happy to be home with Tom for this three-day weekend. Last year at this time I was in New York--my unknowing final sight of Ray, a big Manhattan blow-out meal, a Mets game, my son's engagement. The visit was crowded and expensive and momentous, and next Labor Day will be even more so: we'll be in Chicago with hordes of family and friends for the wedding. So this time around I am ready for the not-momentous: an unhurried holiday at home with my beloved. Our only plan is to take the ferry out to Great Diamond at low tide, probably on Monday, so we can walk across the sandbar to Little Diamond and find a picnic spot in some quiet beach nook.

Yesterday I finished moving firewood into the basement, and now the cellar is swept, the logs are stacked and tidy, the kindling is stowed, and I am basking in the glow of accomplishment. The wood is in: there's so much satisfaction in that small dry sentence. Let the darkness creep forward! Let sleet clatter at the panes! The lamps are lit, and the wood is in.

And we got our first steady rain yesterday, a cool autumn rain, hinting at sweaters and socks and couch blankets and hot tea and tomato sauce simmering in the kitchen. For dinner I made bluefish en papillote, steaming the fillets with black beans, shredded cabbage, and sprigs of thyme; serving them with freshly made salsa and a salad of cucumbers and green beans. I played a My Bloody Valentine album and thought sentimentally of the time my boys and I were car-shopping in Bangor, and we test-drove a car we couldn't afford and drove it around the mall roads while blasting My Bloody Valentine songs on the stereo. Once Ray went to a My Bloody Valentine show and reported that it was "too loud"--a real accomplishment by the band, I'd say, given Ray's lifetime devotion to raucous rock shows.

I got up too early this morning, thanks to pesty Chuck. But that's nothing new. Though I may dream of sleeping late, I hardly ever do. Now he's folded himself into the gap between the back of the couch and my shoulder, wedged in, purring like a pressure cooker, pressing his cheek against mine or patting me with a tiny soft paw. Little Chuck is such a romantic.

On the coffee table: Ruden's Plath study, Lahiri's Whereabouts, Whitman's collected works. An almost-finished book of very hard crossword puzzles. A history of indigenous America, a New Yorker. An empty white cup and saucer. On the mantle, a pewter cup overflowing with sweet peas, a stoneware vase of dahlias and cosmos. Outside: pink-tinged daylight and the clonk of black walnuts dropping from the tree onto my neighbor's junk car.

This is a long note. I seem to have contracted logorrhea overnight. I will release you from my sentences. I hope you get a chance today to enjoy your own.

Little Chuck's debut with the poets went swimmingly. He enjoyed a novelty pen and a notebook with ribbon markers. He climbed into book bags. He submitted happily to doting and cuddling. He claimed his own chair in the circle, then fell asleep in it.

Often I've wondered if, morally, I should have adopted a more difficult-to-place animal: an older cat, a shyer or more anxious one. But it is so gratifying to have a pet who easily dispenses charm and cheer amid a clutter of guests. Like Ruckus before him (though in different ways), Chuck is good at a party. Really, I don't know why I should feel guilty for choosing to adopt a well-adjusted kitten. It's not like this one had an easy start, given his hoarder background. I've also read that shelters sometimes have a hard time placing black cats. So maybe I did him a good turn by taking him in, and now he is doing us a good turn by being such a sweet and sociable pal. Whatever the morals of the case, he lives here now, and we're glad to have him.

So now it's Friday--recycling-truck day, washing-the-sheets day, finishing-the-firewood-chore day. I wrote a couple of drafts last night that I want to inspect this morning. I have friends' poems to read and the book about Plath to pore over. I'll go for a walk. We'll eat bluefish for dinner, and freshly picked green beans, and homemade ice cream, and we'll play cards and listen to the Sox versus the Pirates, and we'll be happy about the long weekend ahead. With luck the sound of rain will lull us to sleep.

I am feeling so grateful this morning for the small and not-so-small gifts. A houseful of friends! A funny kitten! A partner who is so pleased that I have friends, who enjoys the sound of our chatter, who says, "Tell them to come any time." Firewood stacked, fat tomatoes in a bowl, books on the table, a warm arm around me at night and a kitten tucked under my chin. Oh, the world, the world. So terrifying, so beloved.

Fifty degrees on this dark morning, and for the first time in months all of the downstairs windows are shut for reasons of cold rather than heat.

Today is housework day, and another-round-of-firewood day, and, most excitingly, Little Chuck Party day: I've invited my writing group here this evening so that Chuck can enjoy his debut into the social whirl. I'm sure he'll be overjoyed, though to be honest it doesn't take much to overjoy this kitten. He is an enthusiast. Presently he is sitting on my shoulder, purring hard and now and again pressing his cheek lovingly against mine. This cheek-to-cheek stuff is irresistible. It's also impossible to sleep through when he's got breakfast on his mind. Ruckus used to bite me to get me out of bed. Chuck's velvet glove is less decisive but equally effective. First he wedges himself under my chin. Then he pats my face with a soft little paw. Then he rubs his cheek against mine and gets hair in my mouth. The charm-school approach to world domination. So sweet. So annoying.

I've started reading Sarah Ruden's I Am the Arrow: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath in Six Poems. I want to spend time with a friend's new chapbook, and Teresa sent me one of her poem drafts to look at, and I need to come up with a writing prompt for tonight. It will be a busy day for words and wheelbarrow and soap. In the kitchen the toaster pops. Outside, a distant ambulance whoops. Tragedy as background music.  Little Chuck chirps and bats a shoelace.

Given Chuck's ongoing gut issues, I can't lock him out of the basement and away from his litterbox for hours at a time. Nonetheless, I managed to get a sizable amount of firewood into the basement yesterday morning, and then released the lion and let him cavort over the mountain of logs as I stacked. At this speed, I'll need another few days to finish the job, but that's fine. Chuck's delight over the woodpile is worth the extension.

This morning I'll go for a walk with a friend, then return to firewood and my poem draft and my reading. Tonight T and I are going out to the movies--Robert Altman's 1973 noir The Long Goodbye, one of our favorites. Meanwhile, my tomatoes have suddenly started ripening, so I'll make sauce today, maybe freeze a few beans. Clearly it's homestead season--harvest work, firewood work--and I'm lucky to have a block of time to concentrate on the bounty.

Now T is coming down the stairs, and Little Chuck is bouncing after him. The sky whitens; chill air swirls through an open window. No fires needed yet, but the vision of neatly stacked wood in the cellar is satisfying. I look forward to the fragrance of simmering tomatoes. I look forward to a little black cat curled on the hearthrug.

Today I'll finish the Le Carre novel and turn my thoughts to Sarah Ruden's book on Plath. I'll mess around with my draft . . . it's close to done, but a few phrases remain rough or conditional. Is it a good poem? I don't know yet, but for the moment it is alive--shifting, expanding, murmuring.

I know all of northern New England has suffered from drought this summer, but the Maine coast has been particularly stricken. Any rain in the interior never seems to make it to the edge. For instance, though the rest of you had rain yesterday, we did not get a single drop. It's sorrowful to watch the shrubs and trees shrivel into oblivion. Even a passing shower would have been respite. But the rain never comes.

Yesterday I finished Wajsbrot's Nevermore, read a friend's poetry collection, started Le Carre's Agent Running in the Field, and worked hard on a poem draft--exactly the day I was hoping to have. Today I'll do more reading and writing, and I'll also get started on my multistage firewood chore. Part 1 is wheelbarrowing the seasoned logs out of the woodshed and tossing them down the basement hatch. Part 2 is stacking the pile in the basement. Part 3 begins in September, when the delivery truck dumps a new pile of green wood in the driveway, and I wheelbarrow it into the shed where it will season for a year. Tom will help around the edges, after work and on the weekend, but mostly this is my job.

As firewood chores go, it's pretty minor, nothing like the endless forest-to-fire cycle of our life in Harmony. No cutting trees, no hauling them out of the woods, no chainsawing them into stove-length pieces, no splitting by hand or machine, no always being behind schedule, no snow-soaked work gloves and cranky trudging children. Still, even city firewood is a project. There's nothing easy about keeping a wood stove going.

What a lovely weekend! My in-laws are 100 percent fun and sweet and doughty . . . we walked all over an island, walked all over downtown, ate great food, chattered and laughed, became melodramatic over a card game, cosseted Little Chuck, and generally amused ourselves greatly. I so appreciate their good humor, their curiosity, their easygoing restful attitude. It is an honor to be a daughter-in-law in this fine family.

And now it is Monday, and I feel like a person who has actually experienced a restorative weekend. This week I have little on my calendar, other than moving firewood into the basement (which, granted, is a significant project), going for a walk with a friend, and hosting my writing group for Little Chuck Night. So wish me luck with the writing and the reading because they are my primary goals.

I won't start the firewood chore today because we're supposed to maybe possibly who knows receive a dab of rainfall. Last night, from our restaurant window by the docks, we watched the shifting mackerel sky, the wind fluttering the water, and I hope they presaged a true turn in the weather. This drought is terrible.

For now, I am starting the day in my couch corner, with Little Chuck tucked against my shoulder and breathing confidingly into my ear. He, too, enjoyed the weekend company, and now he is full of contentment and breakfast. I've got Cecile Wajbrot's Nevermore to finish today, Sarah Ruden's small book on Plath to begin, Brigit Pegeen Kelly's The Orchard to reread, and a stack of books from yesterday's used-bookstore haunt a-waiting on the shelf (LeCarre, Lahiri, Toibin, Komunyakaa). And today I've got the warming memory of last week's essay acceptance,  I've got a clean and tidy study to work in. And maybe I'll have rain and maybe I'll have good fortune and maybe a few as-yet unknown words will fly up from silence and start humming and bumbling against one another, start murmuring back to me, start telling me a story.

* * *

There's still room in my upcoming Poetry Kitchen class. If you're out there not signing up because you (1) don't understand why anyone might try to experiment with long forms or (2) are struggling with self-confidence about whether or not you should take such a leap or (3) worry that everyone else in the class will already know what they're doing, please reach out and talk to me. As I think I've made clear in a few recent posts, taking the risk of working with long drafts changed me as a poet and as a human being.  I don't say this lightly.

We had a good day out on Great Diamond Island with my in-laws. It is a strange place: one half is a delightful ramshackle ode to 1910s-era shingle-style cottages; the other half (known as Diamond Cove) is a 19th-century red-brick military installation that's been transformed into a prissy condo community. The difference is startling. But I do love the ramshackle half. On the last Saturday of summer, it had a quiet beach, a few kids on bikes, shady gravel roads, and lovely water views, all easily accessible from the ferry landing. Peaks and Long Islands are packed with day trippers, but this side of Great Diamond remains peaceful. Meanwhile, the Diamond Cove side sports restaurants, a wedding venue, day trippers galore . . . It's like the island has schizophrenia.

Back in Portland we stopped at the fish market and bought oysters and toro for dinner; we played cards, made a salad, drank a little wine, and entertained Chuck. It was a delightful Maine-coast day, and I am eager to go back to the charming side of the island with a picnic, a cribbage board, and a book.

It is fun, every once in a while, to treat Vacationland like vacationland. We live here, so it's easy to forget to play here. But Maine is a pretty fabulous place to loaf around in.

I'm not writing well or fluidly these days, though I keep hammering out scraps of new work because that's my only way through these dead zones. This happens often during the summer and usually works itself out as the year wanes. I've always tended to do my best and most intense writing in the fall and winter. Once that made sense because the boys were back in school and I could find more time for myself. But I have no such explanation now; it's just become a seasonal pattern.

I could start focusing on putting together another poetry collection. I could even start thinking about an essay collection. However, I haven't shown any signs of propelling myself into either task. Instead I'm reading reading reading reading, and scribbling out a few unsatisfactory drafts, and drifting in and out of my quotidian chores and obligations. Call it a flotsam-and-jetsam period. I guess it's okay to be finishing nothing. I guess it has to be okay.

Still, these dry patches are hard. I feel more invisible than usual. I panic about whether or not anyone will--or even should--sign up for the classes I invent. I start comparing myself to my brilliant friends. Everyone else seems so vibrant, so full of words and ideas. I, meanwhile, am panting under the weight of Woolf and Whitman and the other lights who have made the work I long to make myself . . . and yet somehow, despite decades of striving, I have not managed to do what I crave to do.

But I had a huge and unexpected lift yesterday. Last fall, after Ray died, I wrote an essay about him, about our youth together, about the way in which our volatile friend group aged into a family constellation. I sent the piece out to a few places, and everyone rejected it. Then I stopped sending it out. And then, a few days ago, I tossed it back into the aether. Suddenly, yesterday, a response appeared in my inbox: yes, the editor would love to publish it. And then, at the end of his note, these words: "Dawn, do you know how great you are?"

I wanted to put my head down and cry . . . for Ray, for my own limping self-confidence, for the balm of these too-kind words. I am, of course, not great. Whitman is great. Woolf is great. I circle them, like a small and bedraggled crow. I wanted to put my head down and cry. The work is so hard. The sugar comes so rarely. The sweetness is so sweet.

Discovering the Long Poem

 Early in my poetry apprenticeship, my teacher, Baron Wormser, pointed out a few of my habits to me. I retreated to glibness and fancy forms to avoid exploring content. I equated revision with radical cutting. I wrote by ear. This last habit, he said, was one he would never question . . . and he never did. From the beginning he trusted my ear, and that was what taught me to trust it. But the other two habits? He was merciless with them. He pushed me into physical language and away from received forms, telling me I shouldn't, for instance, write sonnets until I had a better notion of them as a container rather than a mask. He told me to stop reading and imitating writers such as William Carlos Williams until I had a stronger sense of my own voice and what I needed to say. Exquisite brevity wasn't necessarily concision. Sometimes it was murder. For the first time, I began to recognize that brevity might be forcing me away from exploration.

It was Baron who pushed me into writing my first long poems. I was, in those years, very aware of myself as a failed novelist. My assumption was that I had failed because I didn't have the stamina to crank out the requisite number of words, that I had some fatal misunderstanding of plot construction. It took me years to understand that my inability to write prose fiction had nothing to do with stamina or plot weaving. It had to do with how I was hearing and reacting to language.

Still, I was frightened at the idea of writing a long poem, and the fact that I was a worshipper of the past wasn't helping me. Milton and Keats and Homer lurked in the weeds. What did I have to say that they hadn't said already? In short, I was yellow-bellied: I paced back and forth on the edge of the cliff, winced at the depth of the chasm, invented a hundred reasons not to jump. You know what I mean. I expect you've spent some hard times on that cliff edge too.

But I was so lonely in the woods, with T away all day and two little boys to care for. I was desperate to become myself, whatever that self might be. I was desperate to make something. Working with Baron had opened a door into that unknown country. You could be a poet, he told me, and I clung to that hope. I could become a poet, but I was not a poet yet. And so I had to leap.

I know this all sounds like inflated melodramatic elegy, but I have always lived in a private world of emotional overexcitement. And oddly enough, writing my first long drafts showed me that this emotional overload could, in itself, be an essential driver of a poem. A long draft gave me, for the first time, room enough to feel. I was not cutting myself short. I had no goal, other than to keep opening, opening, opening.

I also began to see that these long drafts were giving me the chance to bring multiple parts of my private life together . . . my daily labor in woods, barn, house; the uproars of children and love; my deeply personal reading patterns; my landscape; my family past; my national shames and worries; my unwieldy terrors and longings.

Of course great short poems can also incorporate these matters. Yet for me, the spaciousness of long drafts became a web that not only linked disparate elements but also caught flies--unexpected strangers swarming up from my imagination.

What if Whitman had ended "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" after part 1? He would have possessed a brief and attractive poem-portrait. As a short poem, it's sweet and evocative and pleasant to read. But he didn't choose to stop. He kept pushing himself forward. "And yet," he murmured to himself. "And yet."

The long poem is an opportunity to say, "And yet," not just once, not just twice, but a dozen times, or more. "I am large, I contain multitudes," he declared in "Song of Myself." So am I. So are you. Writing a long poem is a way to explore our selves.

***

My latest Poetry Kitchen offering is a two-weekend class on writing the long poem, with help from Whitman. If you've never written a long poem, if you're terrified of long forms, if you're an eager writer of long pieces, prose or poetry: this class is for you.

Forty-nine degrees this morning! Autumn has arrived with a bang, and I am sporting my red bathrobe for the first time in months. Ruckus admired the red bathrobe very much, and I expect the new guy will like it too, one he gets his claws into it. Cats think polar fleece is extremely fashionable.

This chilly weather is reminding me that I've got to start moving firewood into the basement soon. I've got to pick up my winter coat from the dry cleaner. I've got to find a new heating-oil company pronto. And school is creeping closer and closer. Technically I've still got a month before classes start, but yesterday the Monson Arts staff met to discuss plans for our high school programs, and I'm starting to feel my schedule tighten.

But for the moment I'm still on summer time. We've got company coming this weekend, so today and tomorrow I'll be focusing on housework and food and Little Chuck hijinks. I'll get onto my mat, and I'll read, and I'll ponder my notebook of draft blurts, and I'll water my sad dry garden, and I'll go out to write tonight with my friends.

I'm happy to say that the Poetry Kitchen class is slowly starting to fill. I've been worried, and I'm grateful a few of you are taking the plunge with me. If nothing else, we'll have Whitman to keep us starry-eyed! Oh, that poem. I am in love.

Apparently we're supposed to get a drop of rain this morning, though only enough to make me sad we're not getting more. Ah, well. Not all is lost. Somehow my half-assed groundhog measures did the trick; and despite the drought, I am now bringing in more green beans and cucumbers than we can quickly consume, the lettuce and parsley are regenerating, and the cilantro only looks semi-terrible.

I did some weeding yesterday--selectively, because stirring up the soil just dries it out even more. I cut down dead flower stalks, deadheaded blooms, and ran the trimmer over the splayed edges of the brown lawn. Things out there look as good as they can look, which is not good at all but is at least no longer dotted with crabgrass.

As I worked, I pulled together some thoughts for a new class on the long poem, so check out what I've posted on the Poetry Kitchen page. I am not 100 percent sure the class will run, though I certainly hope so.   Are people interested in pushing themselves into length? I don't really know.

As I wrote yesterday, for me, the long poem has been transformative. I believe that my best work is likely embedded in those poems. I have learned so much about myself, about the expansiveness of poetry, about dramatic movement and tension, about narrative, about the unknown. Oddly, I've also had external success with those poems: several have appeared in major journals; several have received attention from well-known writers. Many people have the notion that long poems are unpublishable, but that is not the case.

Anyway, I'd love to spend time with you and Walt Whitman and your ventures into the long form. The class will take place over two weekends: one in October, the other in November. Between times, you'll be writing and sharing with other participants. Thus, I hope it will be a social opportunity as well as a writing one. I've capped the numbers at eight instead of my usual twelve so that we have ample time to share work.

The cost is $300, which a friend tells me is way too little to charge for so much time and planning. She worries that I am undervaluing myself, and I take her point. Probably I am undervaluing myself. But I also want to make these classes affordable. I know what it's like to have no money but to long for a community of writers.

Fifty-three degrees this morning, and we're forecast to get a high temperature of only sixty-five. I am glad to see the last of that ridiculous heat, though the continuing lack of rain is painful. Still, it will be pleasant to work outside on a cool day, and that is my plan: weeding, deadheading, running the trimmer, and such.

Yesterday I performed my annual drawer and closet clean-out: sorting through ragged underwear and unforgivable socks, admitting defeat with the supposedly decent items I never seem to wear. This is one of the advantages/disadvantages of living in a tiny house with hardly any closets: the stuff must go. Last week I did a book cull, this week a clothes cull. Fall is on the way, and I'm clearing the decks.

Last weekend's class went well, I think. It's interesting to watch people wrestle with their imaginations--to note where they are willing to venture, where they are not. Some people get distracted by other people's imaginations: say, the metaphors and allusions embedded in literature. Some people get distracted by the intensity of their own real-life emotions or situations. So where does private invention start to create a wormhole through these distractions? What pattern or word or sound is the first opening?

I'm thinking of constructing a future generative class around the building of a long poem--maybe using Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" as the source of prompts and conversation. About once a year or so I find myself writing a very long poem . . . but why? Where does this need come from? And where does the stamina come from? These poems often turn out to be very important to me, both personally and developmentally. They are big, in more ways than one. They are also exhausting. But I've noticed that few people in my classes seem to push themselves into length. What would happen if I created a structure for that experiment?

Today is my parents' sixty-third wedding anniversary. It is also the eighth anniversary of the day T and I closed on this house. That means we've now lived in Portland for nearly nine years (including our first year in the apartment on Munjoy Hill). We're not newcomers anymore.

Eight years in this seventy-seven-year-old house, with its rattletrap repair history and wildlife invasions; with its beautiful new kitchen and charming neighbors; with its sociable front garden and its past-glorious neighborhood cats; with its little wood stove and its clothesline; with its two tiny studies housing two tiny private lives; with its bed, built of Harmony ash, and its bedroom window, with its view of the bay-mirror sky and the wheeling gulls.

Well, I can admit, finally, that I'm glad to be here. This little neighborhood, this little house; the gift of being a poet among other poets; the ability to walk out my door to a meal, a market, the bay, even a small wood; the ease of traveling to visit my children. Eight years in, these amenities still feel extravagant. It is hard to explain how far away Harmony was, and is, from such easy congress.

When we moved to Harmony, we were twenty-eight years old and our blood ran hot and we were overflowing with energy and self-will. We would do everything ourselves! We would do everything in the hardest way possible! But now I am almost sixty-one, and I am ready to welcome a little ease. We still work all the time, so our version of ease is not really all that easy. But we've got a furnace and a dishwasher and trash pickup. We're five minutes away from the grocery store and ten minutes away from the bus to New York City. We can walk to a restaurant on a whim. Poets stop by for coffee. Neighbors leave sympathy cards for our dead cat. I came here kicking and wailing. But it's a good place to have landed.

Little Chuck had his first Bad Day yesterday. He got too excited about a fly and broke a flowerpot in the bathroom while I was teaching, then wailed outside my study door so I had to let him in and wiggle distracting peacock feathers for an hour while also trying to lead a class. Fortunately, having raised two boys, I am able to do five things at once. But I do have hopes that nap time will arrive earlier today and I will do less kitten-roping.

This morning Chuck is back to his usual post-breakfast coziness. We are sitting together on the couch, and C is purring and admiring my hair, and I am purring and admiring his hair, and one would never know we'd had words yesterday over a flowerpot. Chuck just doesn't think straight when a fly is involved.

Meanwhile, T was dealing with a pile of new acquisitions. He's been working on the same massive house build for years, but the job is finally winding down, and that means, among other things, that many over-ordered materials and unwanted items that would otherwise be headed for the dumpster are being offered to employees. So now, in addition to a massive pile of foraged lumber, a new ladder, a roll of window screen, etc., we are the bemused owners of a weird-looking coffee table that apparently cost $3,000 new. I thought I might hate it but I don't. I actually kind of like it, and it's encouraging us to think about getting a rug to go with it, and maybe another lamp, and turning the living room into a comical mod space.

So while I was teaching/Chuck-roping, T was replacing torn window screens, and cleaning the basement to make room for some of the foraged lumber, and putting junk on the curb to see if anyone would take it, and cogitating over the coffee table, and otherwise figuring out how to deal with his building-material harvest.

Now, at first light, the seagulls are screaming over something or other, and a pale breeze is creeping through the new window screens, and a kitten is coiled in my lap like a doughnut, and I am thinking about the dream I just had: I was eating lunch at a restaurant with my friend Gretchen when Taylor Swift showed up and starting hugging and kissing us like the dearest of old friends. Everyone else in the restaurant was amazed but Gretchen and I tried to stay cool, like this sort of thing always happened to us.

The big news around here is that Little Chuck's gut is showing signs of improvement. I can't help but think of the scene, late in War and Peace, when Natasha rushes out to tell her family that her baby's stool has turned from green to yellow. "This is the central moment of the novel!" crowed my college instructor, as various future Wall Streeters and med students stared at him in confusion. None of us (except for the teacher) knew anything about babies, so it's no wonder they were perplexed. Yet I do remember the surge of joy I felt . . . that such a scene could be central, that a dirty diaper could be the pivot of the universe. It was a fine thing for a twenty-year-old to learn.

I'll be working for much of today and tomorrow, leading a zoom class on reading, writing, and re-seeing persona poems. I hope that Chuck will manage to leave me alone, but I am not confident. Presently he is full of breakfast and is companionably curled up on the pillow behind my shoulder, but this sort of Hallmark-card behavior is always extremely temporary.

I've had to take a small break from To the Lighthouse because, like the characters, like the novelist, I am always devastated when Mrs. Ramsay suddenly dies, mid-tale. It never stops being a shock. Instead, I've started looking at Trust, a novel by Cynthia Ozick, which a friend recommended. I know I'll get back to the Woolf, probably very soon, but that death is one of the hardest in literature.

Maybe Petya's, in War and Peace, is as terrible. Maybe the drowning of Maggie in The Mill on the Floss.

Little Chuck is patting my cheek with a paw and purring to beat the band. He argues that he is nothing like death, but I have already lost Ruckus and Ray and my nation this year, so I know better. Still, I let myself believe in this foolish, spiky, four-pound ball of wiggle. "Rules for happiness; something to do, someone to love, something to hope for," wrote Kant, of all people. Perhaps he had just seen his child's dirty diaper. Perhaps he was grinning.

***

On another note: speaking of persona poems, I've got a new one out in the Hole in the Head Review, alongside work by my dear Betsy Sholl. 

 Little Chuck loves to sit on my hands as I type this note to you. After a night of sleeping, he is ready for pal time, and climbs aboard enthusiastically--purring, wiggling, rubbing his nose all over the keyboard, and manhandling my spelling. Admittedly he is as cute as a button while he's destroying my sentences. [Cute as a button is one of my favorite cliches. Buttons are definitely pretty cute.]

It's Friday, and I'll be working all weekend, so I'll likely let myself play today. Yesterday, amid my chores, I worked on a couple of poem drafts, read To the Lighthouse, and prayed for rain (to little avail). Today I absolutely have to clean the piles of books off my desk and arrange my study for a weekend of zooming, but I'll also go for a walk and I'll keep mucking around with my stuff . . . work on a set of poems that borrows lines from Whitman and Woolf, fetch a book from the library around the corner, wrestle with this silly kitten. I think the weather will be cooler, so maybe I can even spend some time in the garden, though the dryness is depressing.

Teresa had a dream that Ruckus came back from the underworld to remind Chuck of how to behave. Ruckus himself always behaved badly in real life, and would certainly have clobbered Chuck as soon he caught sight of him, so this is definitely a fictional scenario, not a mythical message. But isn't it funny that my friend, far away in Florida, dreamed about my cats? She's never even met Chuck.

Well, I must say goodbye and go gather up the recycling for the curb, and empty the messy litterbox, and wash the breakfast dishes, and throw a load of laundry into the machine, and otherwise enact my house persona. I am thinking of Mrs. Ramsey, in To the Lighthouse--her entire life wrapped up in service to others, believing fervently that this was the best possible life for a woman . . . and yet her interior world, her tidal reflections, her fierce privacy. 

Last night, at the ballgame, the temperature finally settled into something like sweetness, but this morning the air is sticky and dense and ominous. Let's hope it really does lead to thunderstorms. We need rain desperately.

Teresa and I talked yesterday afternoon about Whitman, and both of us were infatuated. Though I've read these poems many, many times before, somehow, on this go-round with "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" and "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," I was gobsmacked. "Brooklyn Ferry" especially . . . I felt like I needed to find a way to bring the poem into my body . . .  like I wanted to eat it. What a poem. What a mind. How lucky are we, as humans, to have this artifact of ourselves?

Hey, you should read that poem again. You really should.

I've started pecking away at a small unsatisfactory draft of my own (but perhaps everything would have been unsatisfactory after living inside "Brooklyn Ferry"). And I've finished rereading Murdoch's The Green Knight (also a very good book) and have started rereading Woolf's To the Lighthouse. Today will be housework day, and evening poetry day, and go-pick-up-Chuck's-medicine day--he's been diagnosed with giardia, poor boy, probably picked up from contaminated water in his birthplace. Sounds like it should be a reasonably easy fix, thank goodness, but of course medicating a cat is always an ordeal.

And rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain. If you know any spells or incantations, please invoke them ASAP.

I opened the windows this morning, though I will likely have to close them again before long. Still, it is a relief, even if fleeting, to listen to cardinals pewing and crows cawing and jays squawking and to feel real live air sifting through the screens instead of being boxed up with a/c roar and wind.

Gray first light. Quiet, except for bird clatter. Yesterday I finished working through my stack of poetry manuscripts, wrote out my responses, had a phone meeting with a man who wants to hire me to help him put together an essay manuscript, took Chuck to the vet, watered the garden, made chicken and rice and cucumber salad for dinner. Chuck was, of course, a star at the vet. There's nothing like a friendly lively kitten to make an entire staff of vet techs go soft and googly-eyed. He weighs just over four pounds, small for his age, and he's got some kind of gut issue that has yet to be diagnosed (results should be in today), but he's clearly sparkly and mischievous and he eats well, so once we get that worm or giardia or bacterial issue resolved, he should start gaining weight normally. The vet seems confident, so I will be too. The poor guy had a hard start. It's amazing how well he's doing now, given the conditions he was born into.

This morning I'll go out for my walk before the heat kicks in again, and then I'll turn to my own work: look at poems, maybe apply for a grant, maybe submit a few things, perhaps even consider whether I should start imagining a new collection. This afternoon Teresa and I are going to talk about Whitman, and I'm hoping I'll have to pick up Chuck's prescription, and then this evening I'll meet a friend for a Sea Dogs game. A summer day--poems and birds and baseball. And tomorrow, rain? What a gift that would be.

The weather has returned to torrid. The thermometer hit 90 yesterday and will likely do the same today; maybe tomorrow as well. Fortunately the house is small enough for our one small a/c unit to keep the humidity in check. You know I hate running it, but on these kinds of days it's a boon.

So after my first-thing-in-the-morning walk, I spent much of yesterday comfortably ensconced on the couch: reading a poetry manuscript, working on meeting plans, and periodically dipping back into Murdoch's The Green Knight. Then, in the afternoon, I had a zoom meeting about 2026 teaching conference plans and about a residency in Sarasota that Teresa is cooking up--a week in March for working on a collaborative performance. Right now my March schedule looks crazy--a mad press of teaching in Monson, flying to Florida, flying back from Florida, driving to Bangor for the MCELA event, teaching in Monson--but it's so far away that I can pretend my eyes won't be popping out of my head.

Hey, by the way, save the dates for that 2026 conference: July 5-12!

Today: more manuscript reading, more garden watering, more planning of various sorts, plus Little Chuck goes to the vet. I've been immersed in Murdoch's novel, thinking again about how I've struggled to write about her work . . . I think it always feels too smart for me; I don't know how to speak about the philosophical underpinnings, just about the melodrama and the swirl of characters and the inevitability of error.

Last night, as I was texting with various of my young people, I was thinking, What larks!--a catchphrase from Dickens's Great Expectations--what sweet Joe says to his wife's young brother, Pip, whenever they find a bit of happiness together. One of my young people was in Niagara to see the falls and marvel in the kitsch; another was beaming in a wedding gown. Both were excited, and I felt so lucky to be chattering away with them and enjoying their glee. Thank goodness for these sweethearts in my life.

And now it is morning. The summer air is as thick and warm as ever, yet it's freighted with darkness, that inexorable reminder of winter. I need to think about moving firewood into the basement. I need to think about dry-cleaning winter coats. But then the sun opens its eyes and the heat starts to build and I forget about autumn for another day.

With the big editing project off my desk, I'm turning my attention to other tasks this week. I've got two poetry manuscripts to study and comment on; I need to prep for next weekend's class; I have to attend various meetings; Little Chuck goes to the vet. Undoubtedly my calendar is scrawled with a host of other reminders too. But in and among these chores I should find a bit of space to myself: to linger idly at the windows, to hum and putter; to write and read, to dream.

This was our view yesterday evening from the ferry dock on Chebeague Island. Just a few miles away the city waterfront bustles with lights and cars and restaurant goers and buskers and sorrowful lonely men on benches. Meanwhile the sun sets and the full moon tarries out of sight, waiting for its hour, when it will settle above the horizon, as round and golden as an apricot.

I was tired by the time we got home. After a night of little sleep, I'd labored all morning in the sun, wrestling with fencing and stakes to create (I hope) at least a few groundhog-free zones in my poor damaged garden. Now the raised beds are surrounded with netting, the okra and beans are fenced, and I've transplanted kale, lettuce, carrots, and herbs into some of the protected areas, leaving the rest to fend for themselves and/or distract the groundhogs. I've still got lots of vulnerable plants, but maybe I can save these few. The project took hours, and then I quickly cleaned myself up and we embarked on our afternoon outing: crowded boats, a lot of walking . . . ordinarily all fine and fun, but by late in the day my energy was flagging.

Fortunately all of that outdoorsiness led to a good night's sleep, and I'm glad to be sitting here idly with a purring Little Chuck, who has already created a giant mess in his litterbox this morning (perhaps in is the wrong word) and is now unrepentantly cozy on my lap.

Today will be quiet, I think. I need to go to the grocery store at some point, and probably I'll mess around with some yard and house things, but nothing as extravagant as yesterday's groundhog barricades. I've got a busy week ahead and I'll be teaching all next weekend, so I'm happy to have an unstructured today. Summer is slipping by . . .

 Thank goodness it's Saturday and I can get a bit of a late start this morning. At 1 a.m. I woke up in a stupid brain panic over nothing so had to come downstairs to the living room couch and try to distract myself for a couple of hours before I could finally succumb. Fortunately Little Chuck, unlike Ruckus, is not an alarm clock with teeth but merely a friendly breakfast suggester. So I was able to pet him into submission while dozing a little longer.

This morning I've got to take steps to deal with groundhog defense. The damage is getting extreme, and I am downhearted. So I'm going to do some transplanting and construct a few barriers from existing materials and hope I can salvage at least a few of my crops.

But in the afternoon T and I plan to embark on an adventure--take a ferry out to Chebeague Island and then walk across the sandbar to uninhabited Little Chebeague and wander the trails and beaches for a few hours while the tide is out, then catch an evening ferry back to the city. This will be Little Chuck's longest experience at home alone, but I think he's ready to try . . . We've got to get him into training before I go back to my Monson schedule.

What else is new? Let me think. I had a lovely lunch yesterday with my friend Rebekah, visiting east from California. I met her via one of my manuscript classes, and since then she's had a chapbook published--the best possible outcome. It was a delight to meet in person after all this time. And the Maine Council for English Language Arts has invited me to be their featured presenter at their annual poetry night, which will take place in March on the night before their convention proper begins. I'll be at Penobscot Theater in Bangor, in front of a big crowd of English teachers from around the state, with 90 minutes on stage to use for a mix of writing prompts, conversation, and a reading. It feels like a big deal, and I'm excited.

And then there's wedding stuff. The event isn't till next Labor Day weekend, but my sister and I have been having an amusing time combing this year's end-of-season online sales together, looking at dresses and shoes, and now we have ordered the exact same pair of shoes for the occasion, which is amusing us greatly. The hunt for comfortable dressy sandals with a little heel that can make aging women feel fancy without killing themselves: it's a challenge, and we are having a fun and silly time together. It's so nice to be frivolous with my sister.

Yesterday I worked on a poem, read Whitman, read Murdoch, and made rigatoni with ground lamb, zucchini, garlic, cream, parmesan, and a ton of basil. I listened to the Yankees lose to the Astros. I cleaned Chuck's litterbox three times. (Oy.) I talked to my canoe boy on the phone and heard all about his thrilling trip through the Dumoine River's whitewater. I beat Tom soundly at cribbage. And August sang its cricket song--a ballad, an elegy, a thin dry voice piping into pale and hazy air.

I did finish that editing project yesterday, and also managed to finish my weekly housework chores, so today is all mine, all mine. I'll go for a walk early, then work on a poem draft and my Whitman homework. I've got a lunch date, and then I'll go back to reading, garden a little, figure out something for dinner . . . who knows?--maybe I'll even nap, maybe I'll even sing.

I love the prospect of day filled with who knows? Chuck and I will rattle around our little house together like marbles dropping into a glass bowl, each private life clicking gently against the other. He will chase a leaf. I will turn a page.

Little Chuck is rolling around on my hands, squirming up to kiss my chin, and otherwise interfering greatly in all coherent thought. So, good morning! I have no ideas other than kitten!

**

Now, a minute or so later, he seems to have settled down to a low roar, and I am able to snag three more ideas: the deliciousness of hot black coffee on a coolish summer morning; a cardinal singing in the stagnant maples; the pleasure of having a stack of books to read.

I didn't finish the editing project yesterday, but that's because I was talking to Jeannie and Teresa for two hours about the poems of Patricia Smith, our favorite Virginia Woolf novels, the excitement of this year's teaching conference, and I would remember more if Chuck weren't trying to put his paws into my mouth (ick). Suffice it to say, it was exciting and synapse-triggering, as these conversations usually are, and it made me feel as if I'm not really as dumb as I've been feeling lately.

Today I have to return to the land of slog, but at least I'll get to go out to write tonight. And about that stack of books I mentioned: Teresa, Jeannie, and I are going to reread To the Lighthouse together. I've been talking to my friend Janet about Charlotte Bronte, and I've got a Whitman project underway, and I'm currently rereading Iris Murdoch's The Green Knight, and yesterday in a little free library around the corner I found Clarence Major's anthology Calling the Wind: Twentieth-Century African-American Short Stories. How I love books!

Now the coffee cup is empty and the cardinal is silent, but the books are piled up around me like birthday gifts, each a mystery eager to be opened . . . always a mystery, even when I think I know what's inside.

It's very dry outside--not a speck of rain in the foreseeable forecast. I am watering every afternoon, a tedious chore but necessary if I'm going to preserve any of this ravaged garden. Yesterday I picked a fistful of green beans, some lettuce, some basil, some blueberries: a sorry show of August bounty. Better than nothing, of course, but disheartening. 

Mostly I've been at my desk, chipping away at my editing project. Possibly I'll finish it today; if not, I should get it done by tomorrow. This afternoon I'm zooming with Teresa and Jeannie, which will be a pleasant vacation from all of this nose-to-the-grindstone. It will be Little Chuck's first zoom experience . . . Ruckus was always awful and had to be locked out of the room, but maybe Chuck will focus on being adorable and forget to wreck the place.

I've been reading Graham Greene's Doctor Fischer of Geneva and now I've returned to Iris Murdoch's The Green Knight. But I haven't yet touched my stack of Whitman poems or my friends' manuscripts. Soon, soon. Once I get through this editing job, I'll find space to be a poet again.

We had yet another bat in our bedroom last night, and we are flummoxed. How do they keep getting in? We've hunted down and blocked every crack we can find, but the bats are still winning. It's very annoying for everyone, except for Little Chuck, who is thrilled.

Of course it is easy to thrill Little Chuck. Presently he is bashing around the living room in pursuit of a dry leaf--chirruping to himself, then suddenly freezing, stagey and wild-eyed, like Jerry Lewis crashing a party.

Other than kitten rowdiness, yesterday was quiet--mostly desk work, a bit of gardening, a dash out to the grocery store. For dinner I made bluefish fillets en papillote, steaming them with couscous, dill, parsley, red onion, and harissa and serving them alongside a corn and lettuce salad, with nectarine crisp for dessert. Parchment steaming is such an easy and delicious way to serve fillets; sometimes I forget how much I like the method. 

Today the air continues to be humid and smoke-hazy and rainless, but it's not overly hot, so that's one good thing. In a few minutes I'll hoist myself off this couch and get onto my mat, get out to the clotheslines, get back to my desk. Little Chuck, presently draped over my typing hands, is hoping to thwart these useful plans, but he'll be disappointed. Fortunately, however, he is an optimist and will cheer up as soon as I toss him a crumpled leaf.

A cool, still morning. Last night, driving back from Freeport, where we'd gone to watch an open-air movie, I caught sight of the moon, half-cookie-shaped and tinted a strange and brilliant orange. We wondered then if that was the result of forest-fire smoke, and I think it must have been because today's forecast predicts another plume over Maine. 

This morning I'll go out for a walk, and then I'll be back at my desk. I'm hoping to finish up the editing project this week, and then I'll turn my thoughts to a couple of poetry manuscripts I'm reading for friends. On Wednesday I'll be zooming with Jeannie and Teresa; on Friday I'm going to have lunch with a poet friend from San Francisco. I hope all of this poet contact rubs off on me and I suddenly start writing poems myself. It's not like I'm not writing, though I'm definitely not in the zone. But maybe once I get this editing manuscript done, my chore brain will return to its wandering ways.

I did catch up with herb harvesting this weekend, and I also got the mowing and trimming done, so this week I hope to slowly work on weeding and flower deadheading, if the afternoons aren't too hot. Tonight I'll make bluefish with dill sauce with maybe Yorkshire pudding on the side. We've already got an overload of desserts--both nectarine crisp and a batch of mint ice cream. Summer is the season of quick, do something with that fruit before the fruit flies move in, and then, voila, there's too much food.

I'm back to reading The Leopard, back to wondering what I'll read next when I've finished it for the twentieth time. I'm feeling pleased about the Red Sox, who are suddenly behaving like a competitive team. Little Chuck, who had a great night's sleep, is chasing an empty seed packet through a maze of chair legs in the dining room. T is making his lunch, and I am hoping that no groundhogs are eating my vegetables, and this day should be okay, this day should be fine, I am alive here on this little plot of earth, My heartbeat yearns . . . Are you there? it asks. Who is listening? it asks. What song should I sing?

Little Chuck is shocked by the articles in the New Yorker but he does enjoy the cartoons. What he doesn't enjoy is sitting in the window watching his family have fun outside without him. He wailed as I pulled garlic and prepped the bed for spinach. He wailed as T stacked lumber. We felt sad too. Ruckus was such company in the yard, and we'd love to mentor another neighborhood character. But even though Little Chuck promises to be good, we have our doubts.

Yesterday was my first big basil harvest--a dishpan piled with fragrant green that I transformed into pesto for the freezer. I also made ice cream with fresh mint, a wondrous discovery. I harvested a cabbage before the groundhog got it as well as a handful of green beans. Other than herbs, my only strong crops right now are lettuce, cucumbers, and chard. Better than nothing, though. Much better than nothing. With a groundhog in the picture, nothing is a strong possibility.

One thing I did yesterday was to write an open letter about the Conference on Poetry & Learning. If you're on my mailing list, you received it through email, and I posted it on Facebook as well.

A few things became clear after this year's conference, First, and most importantly, both participants and faculty love it, and believe in it, and want to keep coming back to Monson Arts. The participant evaluations I received brought me to tears: people were generous with praise, giddy with excitement about their own potential. Doing this work feels so important, so necessary, but it's also so thrilling. To work as an artist, seriously, with confidence and curiosity. To work without ego. This is what I want for participants and faculty, and it's what I want for myself.

The primary issue now is scholarship money. I could have filled every space if I'd had enough funds, but I didn't. We need to build a substantial, reliable scholarship fund, and I, who am terrible at asking for money, need to find a way to get better at it, and find people who have the means and willingness to respond.

If you didn't happen to see the letter I sent out yesterday, here it is, with details from the evaluations and a link to the Monson Arts donation portal--

****

This summer’s Conference on Poetry and Learning at Monson Arts was so special. Not only did I have the privilege of working with and alongside the magnificent faculty artists Teresa Carson, Gwyneth Jones, and Gretchen Berg, but the commitment and the brilliance of the participants was both exhilarating and humbling, in all the best ways. We experimented, we collaborated; we were awkward and hilarious, and the words and the feelings poured forth.

Here's what the participants had to say about our week together:

This conference feeds educators and artists both practically and personally. There is an understanding that who we are is not separate from what we do and that we need to tend to and nurture ourselves both professionally and personally. The facilitators of this conference help foster an environment of collaboration and curiosity that enriches the participants at all levels. I walk away with new understandings as an artist, an educator, and a human being in this world. 

Everything about this conference is set up to create an open and supportive environment for participants to explore the possibilities of creative expression, to experience new ways to write and teach. We play and we make things, make discoveries, and take delight in each other’s work. It’s quite remarkable, created by remarkable teachers. 

The faculty provided a unique and edifying experience with a variety of activities. This was one of the best conferences I have ever attended; it enriched my teaching as well as my own personal writing. I will definitely attend again in the future!

Monson Arts offers stellar time and place for every imagination to connect with others and to enlarge one's consciousness of what matters most in life. It's worth every effort in any season and season of life to experience the Conference on Poetry and Learning in this small town of extraordinary beauty and taste on the shores of Lake Hebron.

I found so much hope and joy in creating in community.

I'm so grateful for this beautiful experience. I wrote, I read, I swam in the lake, I kayaked, I wrote, I ate THE BEST food . . . it's been so wonderful. I'm so relaxed and happy; it's been a huge confidence boost. Seriously, it's so inspiring to be in a safe space, a community, of writers who are so nice and supportive. I can't even describe how magical, inspirational, comforting, and cathartic it has been. I remembered I'm a poet, a really good one, actually.

Not your conventional conference. More like a week of magic. 

The combination of skillful and approachable content providers, comfortable accommodations, great food, Maine woods, and a beautiful lake is unbeatable. Add a charming public library, a general store with an ice cream stand, and you will have an image of a summer week at Monson Arts. I dreamed about Monson and the human connections I made there for three nights after I came home. That has never happened to me after a workshop anywhere else. 

The Monson Arts Conference on Poetry & Learning is an extraordinary experience. If you like writing poetry or would like to explore your own writer self, this is a thoughtful and engaging program. As a teacher, you will take away a lot of great ideas to bring back to your classroom. As a writer, you'll learn exciting ways to engage with your work. Whether you are a teacher or a writer or both, this conference offers so much! 

But here’s the deal, friends. Many participants—past, present, and future--are facing the fact that their institutions are increasingly reluctant to financially support professional development. Others have no institutional support whatsoever. So in order to keep supporting teachers and poets in need, we must build a reliable scholarship fund. If you are able to donate to our scholarship fund, in whatever amount, we’d be so grateful. Every cent will go directly to participants who cannot otherwise afford to attend. And if you could commit to an annual donation, especially one that would cover full tuition for a teacher or poet in need, that would be amazing. Contact Chantal Harris, the executive director at Monson Arts, to discuss how best to set up an annual gift to the program (director@monsonarts.org).

Please be in touch with any questions. I so hope to see you in Monson with us next summer—

XX

Dawn

Suddenly autumn feels very close. Outside it's only 55 degrees, and the air is very still and dry and crisp, a relief and a surprise after a week or more of high humidity and Canadian smoke.

Little Chuck woke me at 5 a.m. by chasing his tail all over the bed. The good news is that he wasn't doing this at 2 a.m., which, in kitten land, is a highly respectable time to be busy. To our benefit, Little Chuck is an excellent sleeper, with a more or less human clock. I do wish he wouldn't start his night by stuffing his entire body directly under my chin, but he does eventually move, and usually I wake up to find him coiled between our backs, like he's a hockey referee breaking up a fight.

Now he's sitting happily in an open window keeping a sharp eye out for groundhogs, and I am enjoying a vacation from trying to type while he's also trying to type. Upstairs T is sleeping blissfully through his weekday alarm time, and now Little Chuck pat-pat-pats down the stairs and I hear the crunch of chow between his tiny sharp teeth. Saturday is off to a fine start for all.

Today I'll probably work outside--do some weeding and mowing, harvest garlic, plant fall spinach--and I'd like to mess around with a poem, and I should get started on the Whitman reading I'm doing with Teresa, and I wonder what I'll be making for dinner. This weekend there's a big music festival happening down along Back Cove, and I suspect traffic will be snarled and all day the aether will resonate with unidentifiable bass lines.

Little Chuck, who has wedged himself against my laptop and is now staring enthusiastically into my face, is confident that the day will be great. He is a thorough optimist, is Little Chuck. Considering that he spent his first weeks of life in dreadful hoarding conditions, and that he's still a skinny up-and-comer after that rough start, his daily delight in the world is touching in the extreme.

A soft rain fell all night, and this morning the maples are dripping and the crickets are singing and a purring, wide-awake kitten is sitting on my hands as I try to type. Suddenly it's Friday, suddenly August--somehow this week has flown by. I suppose that's Little Chuck at work: he's a sunbeam, for sure.

Last night I went out to write and now I have a couple of new drafts to play with. I do have editing to work on today, and floors to clean, and sheets to wash. I need to get onto my mat, and haul the trash and recycling to the curb. I have a friend's manuscript to read. But it's sweet to have those drafts floating in my notebook, waiting. And who knows? Maybe I'll find the nest of an hour today, when the poems rise up to greet me.

Through the open window, an unknown bird repeats, repeats, repeats its metallic squeak. Summer . . . every year an elegy. 

I forgot to mention skunk on yesterday's Alcott House wildlife list. One passed through the yard last night, and the smell gave Little Chuck quite a surprise. In other news, maybe we've finally conquered the bat problem. I found a gap behind the trim on one of the bedroom windows, which T caulked up last night. Here's hoping we've finally plugged the hole.

Not much desk work will get done today. The sweep is coming this morning to clean the chimney, so I will be on Little Chuck patrol. Then I'm getting a haircut, and then I'll have to bake something or other for my evening writing group, and in between times I'll scrub bathrooms and get started on floors, if I can take my eyes off that cat. Wriggling into soot seems like a hobby he'd really enjoy.

We're supposed to get some rain this evening and into tomorrow. I hope that's true. A good soaking rain would be so pleasant. Yesterday I cut the season's first baby cabbage (magically untouched by the groundhog) and stir-fried it with fresh red onion, soy-roasted tofu, and lots of cilantro, green garlic, and Thai basil. I do love kitchen-garden life--wandering out late in the afternoon to ponder "What do I have? And what can I do with it?" It is such a luxurious way to cook.

Teresa and I are beginning to cogitate about next year's conference theme, and the word that is resonating is transformations. I thought, during the stress of the past few weeks, How will I ever dredge up the energy to invent new plans? But now I am full of ideas and excitement about new plans--next year's conference, my upcoming Poetry Kitchen class, my high school sessions. And I have a new poem draft, and I'm going out to write again tonight . . . It is such a relief to feel my mind back at work.

Yesterday was so hot. But today should be somewhat cooler, and then tomorrow and Thursday we've got rain in the forecast, so maybe Maine will become more like Maine again.

Early this morning we had another bat in the bedroom. We can't figure out how they're getting in, but clearly there's a gap somewhere. The Alcott House certainly has had its share of wildlife excitement this summer: deer in the driveway, raccoons in the flowerpots, groundhogs munching up the cauliflower plants, squirrels scrabbling in the walls, bats flitting over the bed. Of course I am grateful there haven't been rats, which is what our Chicago kids have to deal with.

At least Little Chuck enjoyed the bat. "It's a bird! It's a mouse! It's both!" he squeaked. "This new home has everything!"

I'll get back onto my mat this morning, then back to my desk. I've managed to pull together a decent draft syllabus for my upcoming Poetry Kitchen class, I'm making good progress on the editing project, and Teresa and I have started to rough-cut the shape of next year's conference. My brain is beginning to function normally again: my imagination is returning; I'm starting to think again. It seems silly to chalk this up to "I've got a pet in the house," but honestly that's what's made the difference. I'm so much happier, so much more pulled together, when I've a little body to hug and tease and chide and (maybe this is most important?) story-tell about.

It looks like the torrid heat will be back today, but the big bad news is that a groundhog has found my garden. Sigh. I never had groundhog trouble in Harmony . . . raccoons, deer, moose, yes, but not the portly devastations of a groundhog. He is maddening and I have little recourse other than to shake my fist and hurl curses and wish that someone with a humane trap would come take care of the situation.

Meanwhile, Little Chuck digs into his litterbox like he's racing Tonkas in a sand pile. I've never seen so much litter on the floor. The animal life sure is lively around here.

Still, I am getting work done. At my desk I've been switching back and forth, back and forth between editing and teaching plans, and gradually one pile is getting smaller, the other getting larger.

[Upstairs, opening a drawer, Tom says, "No. Hey. (Pause.) HEY." Little Chuck says, "Yow."]

This afternoon Teresa and I will meet for the first time post-conference to talk about how the session went and what we might want to start thinking about for next year. So much seems to have happened since I left Monson, but it will be good to dig back into that world. Things went really, really well: participants and faculty were excited, even thrilled, by what ensued with our collaboration prompts and performances. I'm sure Teresa will have ideas about next steps. Now that I'm back on the rails (sort of), maybe I will too.

I am trying to write to you about rain and fog but Little Chuck is determined to type, and his grammar is inscrutable. If any peculiar asdfiawefagswegasdcs show up in this letter, assume that they refer to snuggling and cool stuff in the basement.

Meanwhile, I am taking advantage of his sudden need for a snack to return to the topic of rain and fog. We got a beautiful afternoon rainstorm yesterday, and I think more rain overnight too. As a result, this morning the neighborhood is soaking wet and layered in mist, and the garden looks drunk. Yesterday's laundry is dripping on the line, the maples are laced with cloud, and the air has the briny sea-scent I love so much.

Today is Monday, a back-to-work day and also my older son James's 31st birthday. He is a delight and an amazement to me . . .  such an extraordinary being--hilarious and capable and determined and patient and kind and smart and endlessly curious--and I don't know how I got so lucky. As my friend Gretchen said yesterday, there's some sort of magic in these children. Look at all the mistakes we made. Look at how magnificent the children are anyway.

I'm glad I had a quiet weekend at home . . . well, not quiet, given Little Chuck; perhaps cozy is the better word. It was good to have a little cat racketing around, good to hang out with T, good to do a few tasks and work on a poem and read comfort novels and listen to baseball. I feel more or less ready to return to my desk obligations today. This morning I think I'll also get back onto my mat and start relearning my cool-season exercise routine. I tend to let the mat stuff slide during the summer, what with all of my yard and garden hoisting and squatting and lugging. But I should start reacquainting my body with autumn. It's coming soon enough.

Little Chuck was up early this morning, chasing a leaf around the bedroom. Yesterday he discovered a cache of leaves in the basement, autumn detritus tracked or blown in during wood stacking and lumber moving and such. Delighted, he's started carrying them upstairs in his mouth, one by one, as if he's caught a mouse, and then pouncing on them till they fall to shreds. It's amazing how much noise one dry maple leaf can make at 4 a.m.

So here we are, Little Chuck and I, awake too early on a Sunday. After his leaf fun and a nice breakfast of fish oil and four kitten Greenies, he's sitting sweetly on my hands as I attempt to type this letter to you.

Yesterday I caught up on a few harvest chores: cutting bunches of oregano, dill, and thyme for drying; also batches of wheat grass and hydrangeas for winter bouquets. Now they are festooned in the back room, wilting and fragrant. Today I'd like to sow some more fall-crop greens and herbs, though this deepening dry weather is not ideal for seed starting. Altogether, it's not been a great garden year, weather-wise, but I did cut a big batch of chard, the cucumbers are thriving, and oddly the okra looks promising. For dinner I braised chicken thighs in lemon, garlic, red onion, and oregano, then tossed them with cilantro and Thai basil. Alongside we had new potatoes mixed with green beans, a chard tian, and a salad of mixed greens, cucumber, feta, and mint. For dessert: homemade lemon ice cream and local blueberries. Summer food is the best food.

And finally, after weeks spent focusing on other people and other people's writing (and on sorrow, of course), I dug into my own notebook and started messing around with a draft. It was a relief to feel my mind return to its private rehearsal room, playground, empty stage, open field.

Yesterday was hot and humid, and the a/c was blasting all day. This morning is cooler, but the air quality isn't great--Canadian smoke, presumably--so I may be closing the windows again shortly. Still, it's pleasant to find myself at Saturday. The past several weeks have been ridiculous--all of that hard conference work, then losing Ruckus, then the trip to Chicago, now this new guy in town . . . highs and lows and highs.

But the new guy is--dare I say it?--nice. I am not used to such a thing. Ruckus had many magnificent characteristics, but nice was not one of them. He bit and scratched; he was packed with grievance and vanity; and while he was an enthusiastic family member, he was, as my son would say, a lot. I'm flummoxed by this new and unfamiliar beast: a sweet-tempered cat. Yesterday I clipped his nails, and he just sat in my lap purring. Ruckus would have removed both of my hands.

The name is still in flux, but we are experimenting with versions of Charles . . . Chuck, Chip, Charlie. Presently he is bouncing around on the couch playing with the string bookmark attached to my notebook, and his ears are draped with spiderwebs from the basement. He's full of beans, a cheerful little busybody, and it's really hard to type when he's around.

I've got no particular plans for the day, other than puttery home stuff. I would like to take a look at a poem blurt; I should harvest chard and sow some fall-crop greens; maybe I'll mow grass or weed, but in this drought neither chore is essential. We really need rain, but that's not in the offing. Meanwhile, I'm getting ready to reread The Scarlet Pimpernel, a ridiculous book that I have loved since childhood. The politics are terrible, the plot is absurd, the characters are stagy and silly, but I enjoy them all so much. It's the book version of an Errol Flynn movie.

This little cat has been in the house for less than 36 hours, but he has completely settled in. I've never seen a pet acclimate so fast: no slinking under couches, no shyness about strange hands and voices, no litterbox confusion, no pining. He is a comical, cheerful, sweet-tempered little imp, who readily settles down at bedtime and even let me get work done at my desk yesterday.

We still haven't chosen a name, but we're cogitating.

Otherwise, things are quiet around here. I'm back to editing, back to class planning, back to garden and house things. I've been rereading Lampedusa's The Leopard, one of my favorite novels of all time. I went out to write last night and maybe scribbled a blurt worth looking at again. Here's hoping.

Welcome the heir apparent, who arrived last evening to ensure the line of succession, and may someday even assume the august title king of Maine if he is bossy enough.

He's 12 weeks old, a little busybody, affectionate and sociable, slept all night tucked up under my chin, and is delighted to be here. No name yet, though Tom did refer to him as the Replacement. This led us to thinking about the band known as the Replacements, which unfortunately is full of people who already have our own family names (Tommy, Paul). So the kitty would have to be Bob, which doesn't seem to be sticking so far.

I assumed I'd be up for much of the night with the cat, but magically he slept well and so did I. Presently he's swarming up my shoulder and squirming over the keyboard, and I'm sure I'll be besieged all day. He's got a giant purr and a plaintive squeaky meow and he hurtles around the house like a tiny bumper car, and currently Tom is admonishing him: "You're kind of an attention hog, aren't you?" "Yow," replies the attention hog.

Good morning from chilly Portland, Maine, where the temperature is a surprising 55 degrees. After sultry Chicago, the air feels downright cold, though I expect the town will be back to summer again shortly. Clearly not much rain fell while we were gone, but the garden still seems vigorous. I picked two big cucumbers and a handful of green beans, noted a bit of groundhog damage, and wondered what's been eating my blueberries.

I'd planned to go blueberry picking today with friends, but then started to get that sinking post-vacation desperation feeling and knew I'd be better off hunkering down to the editing project and re-learning how to work. Also, I realized I hadn't been alone at all for six days, and possibly my introvert button is flashing. After a week at the conference and then most of another week in Chicago, I seem to be having a solitude attack.

So today I'll walk, and then work at my desk, and then figure out what else needs to be done around here. I am sorry to miss out on the blueberry fun. I am glad to be home.

We're flying back to Portland this morning, after a visit that has been so exactly what I needed. One of the jokes of the visit has been "why is Dawn falling asleep so much?" because I have been dozing on planes, in cars, on couches; sleeping hard all night and late into the morning. Between times I've been walking, walking, walking for miles through the city; I've been eating and talking and playing games and admiring the lake and peering at tiny museum replicas and talking about cats. But sleep keeps lurking around the corner.

This afternoon I'll  slowly reinsert myself into my workaday life . . . garden, laundry, house. And then, within the next few days, I'll take my first steps toward getting a new cat. That's another thing this visit has made clear: I'm ready.

Yesterday we went to the Art Institute of Chicago, where I saw, for the first time, the permanent collection known as the Thorne Miniature Rooms. The link will tell you more about these displays, but essentially they are miniature replicas of period rooms representing various eras in (mostly) European and American history. Each is displayed as a glass-fronted box slid into the wall, allowing you to peer into into a dollhouse-sized, incredibly detailed room, with glimpses of linked rooms and gardens and street scenes beyond the room's windows. If you are a lover of the children's book The Borrowers, you will adore these rooms. I was entranced.

The photos on the website don't quite give the flavor of the effect of these rooms, partly because they simply look like photos of human-sized period replicas. In fact, most of the rooms are only about a foot square, but they have real parquet floors and actual little desks that lock and unlock and delicate curtains and perfectly turned staircases. Each space is filled with human presence, but there are no replicas of people, and that is part of the charm. They are spaces for imagining the story.

Yesterday was our big trip to Milwaukee to meet H's parents. Originally we'd planned to stay overnight, but hotel prices were too high, so we made a day of it instead--early lunch at a barbecue place, then a walk downtown along the river to look at the Fonzie statue, and finally a very amusing time mini-bowling at a neighborhood dive bar. It was the perfect way to meet new people--light-hearted and simple: the kind of arrangement that J is brilliant at. I don't know how he learned to be so excellently sociable; clearly not from his parents. But we are grateful for his sure touch.

No particular plans for today yet. At the moment I am the only person awake, though the cats are circling like sharks. We may end up at the Art Institute. We may check out the kids' wedding venue--an architectural restoration store that also hosts events. We may grill fish in the courtyard and play some more boardgames. I'm pretty sure we will not track down affordable tickets to the Sox-Cubs game. At the moment the locust trees beyond the alley are twitching in a steady breeze, and the sky is low and gray and rain-gloomy, though no rain is falling.

In the meantime I will sit here alone (except for ravenous cats) with nothing to do but half-doze, glance out the window at pigeons and trees, and read my book. A challenging schedule but I will persevere.

***

Oh, and today is our 34th wedding anniversary. The sentimental storylines are rife.

 Good morning from Pilsen. From my window I am looking down over the alley behind my son's building--a clutter of tall weeds, garages, fences, power poles, garbage cans . . . what Dickens calls a mews in his novels. Rock doves coo in a local gutter. Massive fringed locust trees line the street beyond the alley. Most of the buildings around here are brick--some red, some yellow, and often exuding a rundown European flare, given that the majority date from the early twentieth century, when Pilsen was a Czech enclave. Since then, demographics have switched to mostly Michoacan Mexican, and many of these old Eastern European-style buildings are painted with murals depicting Mexican American history and culture. The effect is jaunty.

Yesterday J, T, and I went to the Lincoln Park zoo and saw some excellent giraffes and a green broadbill that might be the greenest thing I have ever witnessed. 

Then we walked to the lakefront and drank beer and ate loaded fries in a silly beach bar and stared out at the umbrellas and the volleyball players and the jet skiers and the lifeguards and the splashers and the sandcastle makers before wending back to Pilsen for afternoon naps.

J owns a tiny compound composed of a building with two rental apartments on the street side, the carriage house where he lives on the alley side, and a little plant-festooned concrete and decking oasis between them, like a snug secret garden. In the evening we sat around in the courtyard until we got hungry, then strolled down the street to a tent where a man was cooking tacos and ordered a dozen to carry back to the house. The air was soft and pleasant, cicadas buzzing and humming in the locust trees. Our tacos were a sort of heaven, and then we played a board game, and eased our way into sleep.

This visit to Chicago has been exactly what we needed . . . lots of wandering, lots of idle talk, little responsibility. Today we are going on an adventure to Milwaukee to meet H's parents. It seems that Milwaukee is full of strange and varied bowling alleys, and J has reserved us a lane at a tiny place with actual live pinsetters. I am quite looking forward to it.

Our plane was delayed in Portland so we didn't get into Chicago till after 11, which was midnight eastern time. And then we stayed up to eat dinner and visit with the kids, so that accounts for why I'm only waking up now. House is already busy and chattery, so writing is hard. Talk to you tomorrow!

Another torrid night, another sticky morning, and birdsong is such a balm.

This evening we'll be flying to Chicago, so this will be my last home morning for a few days. As a routine, nothing could be less spectacular--sitting alone on a couch at daybreak with a cup of coffee--yet such dim little habits are what soothe me into and out of the clatter of the world. Now, upstairs, the bed creaks; I hear Tom beginning to open and close drawers, hear the thud of his bare feet on the floorboards . . . the workday is yawning and blinking, and soon I will lift my face from these words and turn toward my beloved's smile.

We are looking forward to our travels, which, as travels go, should be easy. We're flying out of Portland, so no connecting bus to Boston, no wanderings through massive barracks. A friend will pick us up at the house and within ten minutes drop us off at the little Jetport, with its mod name and miniature halls. We'll fly directly to Midway, avoiding the angsts of O'Hare, and our son will be there to greet us. The trip sounds so simple, like wafting. I hope it really will be.

So tomorrow morning I will write to you from the urban thickets of the Midwest . . . sausage city, prairie town, big hick burg trembling under the endless rattle of the El. You know the legend, and some of it is true. I'll let you in on some other stories as I bump into them. What I do know: The Red Sox will be playing against the Cubs at Wrigley Field. People will be grilling hotdogs by the big lake. Cats will be a large topic of conversation. I will regret my ignorance of Spanish.

A moment ago I switched off the noisy a/c, and now the house is flooded with birdsong. The neighborhood is very quiet, more like a Sunday morning than a weekday. Summer rhythms . . . yesterday the high school girl who lives across the street lay on her stomach in a strip of grass reading, reading, reading, and I thought I might cry from the sweetness of it. Though of course most anything can make me cry these days. I am leaking tears, just as I did in the months around our move from Harmony. "Don't mind me," I used to tell people. "This always happens."

Still, despite the constant slow drip, I'm getting used to Ruckus's absence--to sitting outside without him, to climbing into bed without him. I can't help but imagine how angry he'd be, watching me manage. He had zero confidence in my survival skills.

Yesterday morning, before the heat kicked in, I worked in the garden--planted second-crop greens, did some weeding, ran the trimmer. Today I'll meet a friend for a walk, then do a bit more weeding, and eventually return to desk obligations as the day warms. I'm waiting for a big new editing project to appear. I've got prep to do for my upcoming Poetry Kitchen class. I suppose I could try out a poem draft, but writing the cat's obituary seems to have sapped my fluency. Unfortunately I'll miss my Thursday poetry group this week as that's the night we're flying out to Chicago. So the only words available will be the ones I stumble over on my own.

I thought maybe yesterday would be an easier day, emotionally, but it wasn't. It was the first day I'd been alone in the house since Ruckus's death, and his absence was everywhere. He was such a social being, always making sure he knew where I was, always close by, whether inside or outside. Without his company, the house and garden feel dead.

I know I'll get over this sensation eventually. So I'm still plodding away at my chores and pretending that I care about them, because one of these days I really will care again. And I know I ought to get another cat sooner rather than later. It's better for me to have a little someone to tend and fuss over.

But this week is not the week. I will continue my sad round for a few more days, and then we'll fly to Chicago into the embrace of our kids and their three rowdy cats, and when I'm home again I'll figure out what to do next.

This morning I'll get into the garden . . . tear out peavines and sow kale seed and salad greens, prune and stake tomato plants, do some weeding and mowing and trimming, and otherwise ready the beds for a few days on their own.

One bit of good news is that my younger son's health issues seem to be abating. In the summers he leads wilderness canoe trips in northern Ontario, but this season has been tough. He started off with a bad ear infection, then had to be evacuated from his trip after he was stricken with full-body hives. The med staff can't figure out what triggered anaphylaxis; best guess is a bite or a sting exacerbated by stress over Ruckus's death. In any case, it was a scary situation, handled deftly. By the time I learned about it (yes, during the conference and, jeez, how much can one person compartmentalize while trying to do a hard job?), he was on a cocktail of meds and responding well, and yesterday he cheerfully told me that they were bringing him back to his campers and he would continue the trip.

No option but to trust. The staff are well trained in wilderness medical emergencies. All I can do is wish him bon voyage.

Almost imperceptibly the early mornings are becoming darker. At 5 a.m., I turn on a lamp and peer into a garden of shadows. A robin sings andante. Heavy air leans a cheek against the open windows.

Last night I slept, really slept, for the first time in more than a week. Writing Ruckus's obituary was a help in that regard, as I knew it would be. When I sent copies to my sons, both were relieved--not just because they were pleased with what I had said but because they knew that framing words around his death would carry me forward.

I wrote the obituary, and then I reread it about a hundred times, off and on throughout the day. That, too, was helpful. Ruckus has entered the land of legend. When the new stories end, the old stories step into their power.

So this morning I feel ready to turn to other responsibilities: post-conference paperwork, unpacking books,  catching up on housework. Because of my state of mind--because I had to compartmentalize my grief so strictly last week--I couldn't keep you apprised of how well the conference was going. In truth, it was transformative. Bringing in Gretchen and Gwyneth, expanding our learning into body-thought, had a tremendous influence on the collaborative projects that the participants created. I heard new freedoms in their poem drafts, in their conversations. I felt these new freedoms in myself and in the collaborative lessons that Teresa and I were constructing on the fly. We left the conference with a great sense of anticipation.

I don't know what will happen next year in Monson. But I am already excited.

On Thursday evening Tom and I will fly to Chicago to spend a few days with our beloveds. Given our newly lonely household, the timing is good, despite the breathlessness of shifting so quickly from one sort of travel to another. In the meantime, I will try to learn to be without my dear little noisemaker. I will try to look inside myself, outside myself. The days march on.

* * *

During the conference, I received notification that one of my essays appears in Vox Populi's list of most-read works. I wrote this piece quite a while ago, when my younger son was still in high school. It was strange to revisit it.