It's rose season in Maine, and the bushes are loaded this year. My neighbor's old rose, which may be almost a hundred years old, is always a heavy bloomer, but this year it's so massive that she's asked me to cut flowers as a way to keep them from overtaking her walkway and front steps. So now my vases are overflowing with roses, and the house is overflowing with fragrance.

At the moment all of the house windows are open to the cool air, but that will soon change. Temperatures are forecast to rocket into the mid-90s today, and I am going to have to be grateful for a/c. But for another hour or so I can allow the summer air to linger.

The animals are busy in this brief hiatus between night and heat. A raccoon moseys through the backyard and dumps over a flowerpot. A robin sings on a shed roof. A squirrel excavates among spindly pepper plants.

Yesterday I set my desk-self up at the outside table and spent a couple of hours on the phone with Teresa, combing through every aspect of our conference plans as neighbors' air conditioners dripped and spat, cardinals pewed, chipmunks skittered, and the fat white cat flopped dramatically in the grass at my feet. I suppose I'll be boxed up in the house today, which is too bad as I've been very much enjoying the al fresco life.

Oddly, while Teresa and I were talking, my phone kept pinging "email, email," and when I looked later I discovered that I'd received two journal acceptances--both for what I suspected might be unpublishable poems. One of the submissions is very long and very literary, a combination that is always hard to place. The other, a persona poem, features a young central Maine speaker who may or may not be considering abortion--a situation that does not automatically appeal to gatekeepers. As you know, I hardly submit anything these days, and when I do I tend to send to journals that are already familiar with my work. So I was surprised, and of course pleased, to learn that both of these weirdo pieces would enter the conversation, and both in places where my work does not typically appear.