We arrived back in Portland in the same weather we left: pouring rain. Still, everything is so much greener. Despite the matching downpours, it's clearly been warmer here than it was on the island. Eventually the rain calmed enough so that we could unload the car. Otherwise, it was an undramatic return. The cat readjusted to being home again, T and I went out for Sichuan food, and then the three of us sat around on the couch listening to baseball and getting sleepy until we faded off to bed.

Today, of course, I have a million chores to do, large and small--house, desk, phone, errands--but first I'm going to take a walk and inspect this new greening-up town. On the mantle is a big bouquet of forsythia from the island, trembling on the brink of blossom. In my yard a few bright daffodils nods and beam. I look forward to discovering what other gems the neighborhood yards are sporting.

It was an odd little vacation--overshadowed by cold rain and a sick cat--but restful in its own way . . . if you discount the twice-a-day purgatory of cat pills. I read Austen's Persuasion cover to cover, with the sort of zest generally reserved for eating potato chips while stoned. I copied out all of Coleridge's Lime-Tree Bower and half of his Frost at Midnight. I muscled through another large chunk of James's The Wings of the Dove. We did no mountain climbing whatsoever, but we did mosey through a bog and idle along a cove. We saw a lot of our friend, ate good cottage-made meals, drank too much wine, went on an outing to the town dump, and moved some old tires. Tom installed window trim, our friend and I talked about poems, and we all hated the government.

Friendship with this world, ever more perfect

(if not for the salty smell of blood).

                 --Adam Zagajewski