In this half-lit hour, wet sidewalks glisten, and a steady breeze spins and rattles among the leaves. There's no rain falling at the moment, though the air is spongy with moisture. 

A Carolina wren bursts into voice. Teary, teary, teary. Teary, teary, teary . . . She repeats, repeats, repeats, then suddenly falls silent. A gust flutters the screen door.

Upstairs Chuck chirps at Tom, and Tom replies, Oh? In the strengthening daylight I note that the neighbors' driveway is pasted with soppy leaves, and now a next round of drizzle begin to tap at the panes.

Here's hoping for storm all day, pot of minestrone on the stove, cup of tea in hand, reading books by the fire, occasional check-ins on the Sox and the Bills games, nothing much, nothing important, a wet Sunday at home, Chuckie scrabbling noisily among the dining-room chair legs, a loaf of bread on the rise.

Saturday morning. Darkness still curls over the little northern city by the sea, and roofs, chimneys, maples are sharp-edged silhouettes against the sky's blue ink. So far, no rain or wind has made landfall, but surely the bay is thickening, whipping itself into foam and thunder, and the humid air is heavy with portent. 

I lit the wood stove yesterday, for the first time this season, and listened to the Sox beat the Cubs, and mashed potatoes and roasted broccoli, and turned on the lamps, and the soft weight of autumn evening settled onto house, garden, sidewalk, street.

Now Chuckie crunches his chow, and Tom sighs in his sleep. Day slowly pulls up the shades, and inky sky fades to pale cloud.

In a little while I'll go for my walk, I'll deal with laundry, I'll find something to wear, I'll gather together books, I'll climb into the car, I'll drive off to the north, I'll read poems. Meanwhile, the ocean will churn and gulls will flatten and veer in the wind.

There is nothing like a storm to make one's own doings feel small.

I just woke up from a dream in which I was trying to teach in a crowded classroom in Guilford, Maine, but the kids were playing music, joking, talking, completely ignoring me. Some administrator--the principal?--was in the room observing and appeared to be entirely unconcerned about my helpless state. It's a standard version of a teacher anxiety dream, but the timing is odd as I have just taught two different populations of kids (in New Jersey and in Monson) and didn't have trouble with either. Does my brain think I should be more scared than I am?

Yesterday I went for a walk, baked two apples pies, did the grocery shopping, edited a novel, endured a meeting, finished stacking our green firewood, went out to my poetry group, and wrote a funny poem draft that I'm pleased with--altogether a productive day. Today should be quieter. I'll be talking with Teresa this afternoon about Aurora Leigh, but otherwise I'll mostly be at my desk trying to make a dent in the editing project and attempting to remember what it feels like to be home.

The homey feeling will be brief as tomorrow I'll be on the road again, reading at Bailey Memorial Library, 1 p.m., in Winthrop. Terrible weather is forecast for the weekend, but Saturday looks like the less problematic day, so stop by if you're in the Augusta area. I'm thinking I might bring along that crown of sonnets again.

And then I really will be home, and for an entire week too. Such a novelty! My first plan is to thoroughly enjoy the oncoming nor'easter on Sunday . . . light a fire in the wood stove, bake bread and simmer minestrone, deal with herbs (pack up dried sage, thyme, and dill; process more parsley and basil for the freezer), maybe watch the Bills game if it's available on local TV, definitely fall asleep in front of the fire while rain whips at the windows. Doesn't that sound ideal?

We had a great first day of school at Monson Arts. This year's cohort is already eager to write, talk, and share, though most have known each other for only about 5 minutes. I've got two repeats from last session, the younger relative of a previous student, and, for the first time, an alum of the visual arts program who's decide to do the writing program this year. I've also got my first homeschooler, though V/A has had a few over the years. What I'm short of, so far, are boys (only one). But a couple of the schools had conflicts and couldn't send kids for the first day, so that may change.

On the way home Gretchen and I  took a side trip to North Star Orchards in Madison, my very favorite orchard on earth. I was a regular customer there, all the years we were in Harmony. They have extremely effective storage practices, so the fruit is fresh and firm late into the season, and the spot itself is just gorgeous--up on a rise that overlooks the western Maine mountains and down into New Hampshire's Presidentials. And to my great happiness, the owner remembered me clearly, asked after my boys, and altogether reminded me that my life in Harmony was real.

So I came home loaded with nostalgia and Tom's favorite apples (and also pears, a gift from the chef in Monson), which means that today I'll need to squeeze pie baking into the schedule. I have to edit, and I have to grocery-shop, and I have to meet with arts commission folks, and now I have to slice up apples and roll out dough. What I don't need to do is go away overnight any time soon. So much road stuff, so close together. I am very ready to be home. 

 Good morning from the homeland, where the trees are turning red and orange in a dry dusty way, and the lake shimmers in last light before dark, and the loon splashes and  wails. We lit a campfire by the water and sat out late. And then I went to bed and dreamed of my dead cat dying again, and of a crazy bus driver who needed to be overpowered before he crashed the bus, and of someone who kept referring to Marie Antoinette as Margaret Antoinette.

Tomorrow will be my first Monson Arts high school class of the season, which means that this afternoon I'll be heading north for my first overnight-in-the-homeland of the season. It will be fun: I'm driving up with Gretchen, who's going to lead an opening morning with the kids, and we'll spend the night by the lake, with all of its overtones of summer. So there's a bit of a party atmosphere in the air, despite the schoolishness. Also, I have my car back, thank goodness. We fetched T's truck from the garage yesterday afternoon, and now all I need to do is wipe a little sawdust off the Mazda seats and try to remember how the electronics work.

Yesterday was mostly laundry and housework, but I did meet with Teresa and Jeannie in the afternoon to talk about the strange and complicated writing prompt we've been playing with, which (as I think I mentioned last month) involves the visuals of part of an avant-garde music score by the composer Cornelius Caridew. I can't share that visual here because I'm sure it's copyrighted, but I'm hoping that one of these days we can figure out a way to share what we've been doing. Our own pages are also quite visually messy--Teresa in particular is struggling with how to show her work--and now we're also beginning to imagine soundscapes, so who knows what might happen. For now, it's an interesting bog.

This morning I'll go for my walk and then I'll slam out some editing before I start pulling myself together for departure after lunch. I brought the first loads of firewood up from the basement yesterday, so the living room suddenly looks different--smaller, snugger. No lit fires yet, but my match is at the ready. Still, fresh flowers flutter on the mantle; the kitchen counter is full of tomatoes; summer hasn't relinquished her grip. It's an odd season, this transition, this shimmy into the waning year.

***

On another subject entirely: Here's a link to an interview with me in the Third Fig Review, the newsletter of Millay House Rockland. 

We arrived home to a cold house last night. Apparently Maine transformed into full-fledged autumn while we were gone, which means that today I'd better bring up a load of firewood and the fire tools so I can be ready for this new world. As it was, we immediately caved to our unprepared state and turned on the furnace. Modern life has its allures.

I was insomniac in Brooklyn but fortunately collapsed into a dreamless coma as I soon as I returned to my own bed. However, the Monday-morning alarm was quite unwelcome. I could have stayed asleep a lot longer, if Chuckie had allowed it. But the Big Kitten is too thrilled to have us home again to allow us to stay asleep. So blearily I sit here writing to you, and blearily Tom drinks his coffee upstairs. The day demands our obedience.

In good news: Tom's truck is supposed to be ready for pick up today, so I should get my car back in time for the drive to Monson tomorrow. In bad news: We'll be slapped with yet another heart-stopping vehicle repair bill. In regular news: There's a lot of laundry in the basket, a lot of desk work in the coffers. The housework list is long, and the garden is wild. I've got a zoom meeting this afternoon, and I hope I don't fall asleep in the midst of it.

Yesterday was busy and lovely. We began the afternoon at the NYC Transit Museum, which is actually one of my favorite museums of all time. It's located in an unused subway station, and many of the exhibits are touchable and usable--turnstiles, ticket booths, and subway cars spanning the entire history of the network, which one can wander through and sit in. Then, midafternoon, we went to the buffalo stampede, an event I had struggled to imagine but that turned out to be one of the most interesting public art projects I've ever experienced. The giant puppets were amazing: the puppeteers were able to move and shift them in ways that really evoked the bodies of massive herd animals. Even when standing in place, they were always shifting and flickering, as large ruminants do; and the sight of forty of these puppets moving through a major city was poignant and beautiful. We walked the route with them, and with a huge crowd of other people--along the way stopping to listen to gospel singers on the steps of Borough Hall . . . among them Rhiannon Giddens, which was exciting. It was just a great afternoon, one that felt both impulsive and mysterious, and I was so glad to be there.

Temperatures cooled down enough last night for Steve to turn off the A/C, so now through the open bedroom window I listen to a single sparrow chirp, chirp, chirp like a slow metronome. The cicadas still hum, and beyond the animal voices I hear the far-off mutter of expressway traffic, closer roar of a truck, clipped whine and whoop of a cop car.

It was fun to meet Tom in town yesterday. I miss him so when I'm on the road, and it is nice to think that we can gradually work out ways to be together a little more often during my long travel stretches. This evening we'll be doing our parental duties--meeting up with our son's partner's family in Manhattan, going with them to a show--but the rest of our Saturday is open. So we've decided to check out this spectacle: a public art project in which 40 life-sized buffalo puppets stampede through downtown Brooklyn. I have high hopes that this will be strange and wonderful, but maybe it will just be a crowded mess. With a spectacle, one never knows.

It's muggy and dim this morning, and the cicadas in the apartment's handkerchief-sized backyard are operatic. The city is warmer than I thought it would be when I was home in autumnal Maine: summery and sticky, not a hint of chill in the air.

Thus far the visit has been relentlessly social, as I knew it would be. So I'm glad to be able to start off today slowly. I will meet Tom at the bus stop around 12:30, but till then the hours are my own. My plan is to get out of this bed whenever I happen to get out of it: shower, go find some coffee and a bagel, and then come back to the apartment and work on poems until I need to leave for Manhattan.

Yesterday's classes in Jersey City were fun--each an entirely different teaching experience, so that was great practice for me. The first was a largish AP Lit class, composed of the kinds of kids who usually sign up for such classes: a few serious literature lovers but mostly students who are pragmatic about its usefulness on college applications. These kids are primed for analysis, and I had only 50 minutes to surprise them into engaging as makers first, examiners second. So I dictated a Celan poem and gave them a writing prompt; then they read aloud a Sexton poem, and I gave them another prompt. After each writing prompt I then had them go back to the poem under discussion and engage with it . . . but asking them to make their own drafts between reading the model and talking about the model--creating a gap that belonged solely to them--felt very exciting. No one shared work. I did give them the opportunity but didn't expect them to take it. Not only was I new to them, but the class itself was unknown territory: they've only been in school for a couple of days. They have no trust-comfort yet, and I wasn't about to push them into that space. But I know they wrote, and I know they thought about what they wrote. I could see that in their eyes; I could hear it in their subsequent responses to the model poems; I could see that they were surprised.

The second class wasn't so much a class as a conversation with three serious student poets who wanted to share their work with me. Again, we only had 50 minutes, but we listened to work, reacted to it, talked about next steps, they asked me questions . . . They were eager and sweet and lovely to spend time with, and their work was strong and exciting.

This is a big urban high school, the city's academic magnet institution. These kids are all college-bound, many for Ivies and Little Ivies. I went to a Little Ivy myself, so I recognize the signs. No matter what worries lie below--about class status, racial discrimination, family situations--these kids understand that they are expected to succeed at a very high level. In that way they are entirely different from my central Mainers, yet young people everywhere are so dear, so obstinate, so open, such liars, such clowns, so fragile, so sturdy, so full of pulsing energy and lethargy. I am endlessly moved and frustrated and entertained by them.

On the train ride back to Brooklyn I was surrounded by a pack of middle school boys who accidentally clanked their water bottles on people's knees and spilled Chex Mix all over the place and had no idea where their feet were. My eyes filled; these children were so . . . themselves. I don't know why I am such a sucker for the awkward, idiotic charm of youth. But I do love it.

Good morning from Brooklyn, where I am getting ready to roust myself into my work day. So far the weather here has been cloudy and warm--not hot, but more summery than Maine has felt lately--and last night, when Steve, Paul, Lily, and I were walking through Gowanus, I found myself imagining what the place must have smelled like fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago. The dense pong of urban life: it must have been almost intolerable. Sanitation is one of the great boons of the modern world.

In a few minutes I'll get into the shower, get dressed, get out the door--heading first over to Paul's for breakfast, then to Jersey City to teach. I'm a bit apprehensive about teaching, but then I always am. I know I'm decent at the job, but that doesn't mean I'm relaxed about it. Teaching is a performance, and a performance keys me up.

Greetings from the bus, which is still lingering at the terminal, waiting for one final straggler. It's quite underfilled--only a few of us heading to the city this morning. And now the door sighs shut, and now the driver buckles his seatbelt and the safety video intones and the lights dim and we are on our way.

The sky is gorgeous this morning: clear blue striped with dense yellow-gray cloud. It's a fine day for a voyage. We lucked out: a non-bumpy bus, which is not always the case. The movie appears to be about French cats.

I need to work this morning--I've got a poetry collection to copyedit and a couple of poem drafts to revise before I email them to my Poetry Lab compadres. I ought to think a little more about the classes I'll be teaching tomorrow. I spend so much time with rural kids that a dip back into the world of urban teenagers will be a useful lesson. And I daresay I will do something dumb, which is always instructive.

Otherwise, I've got a novel to entertain me (James McBride's Deacon King Kong, loaned by my friend Gretchen) and a ham-and-gorgonzola sandwich to enjoy and I am glad I decided to wear socks and sweater on this bus because it's chilly in here. Compared to last week's train odysseys, this 6-hour trip is a skip and a jump. I might even nap through the whole thing.

The bathrooms are clean, the floors are washed, the sheets are changed. Ugh, housework, the never-ending chore. But anyway I'm caught up for the moment, till next Monday anyway. Which means that today is desk- and yardwork day. On Thursday afternoon I'll be teaching a class for my friend Holly at a high school in Jersey City, so I need to keep prepping for that, and I hope to finish a batch of editing today as well. I should pull out the trimmer and deal with the straggly crabgrass; I should deadhead flowers. I ought to pack, and I should make a don't-forget list for Tom who will be holding my fort till Friday, and I need to figure out where I can store my suitcase temporarily while I'm cruising around Manhattan tomorrow afternoon. I have to learn how to get to the Morgan Library from Grand Central Station and estimate when I might arrive so I can meet Jeannie at the door. I need to remember to text Steve so we can converge in Brooklyn later in the afternoon. And no doubt I'll be peppered with texts all day from my son Paul, who is one of those mysterious kids who appears to love to hang out with his parents. Where are you? Where are you going? Wait for me.

A voyage to New York is always a social maelstrom, though at the same time I am constantly traveling through the city alone, trying to converge with this person or that person at this time or that. Subways and streets are a web of solitaries.

I have one job obligation--Thursday's jaunt to Jersey City--but otherwise this is a friends-and-family venture: the Morgan tomorrow with Jeannie to look at Ashbery drawings and Peter Hujar photographs; embracing Tom at the bus stop on Friday and then going to the Cloisters on Friday with him and Paul to look at the Bat Lord, a Zapotec clay sculpture made between 800 and 900, and the unicorn tapestries because we all adore them; then meeting our Lily's mother and stepfather on Saturday and going to Broadway with them to see Shmigadoon, which is not exactly our style of show but we are determined to have fun because NEW YORK and BROADWAY and BRIGHT LIGHTS and we love our Lily.

Visiting Chicago and New York City in the same week is a ridiculous schedule, but ridiculous schedule is my new middle name, and why not embrace it? 

Yesterday was kitchen day, as this photo attests. From left to right: pizza dough rising, a peach cobbler cooling, and five jars of peppers waiting to be labeled, then stowed on the pantry shelves. Not seen: three quarts of sliced frozen peaches, three quarts of diced frozen peppers. It was a giant undertaking, hogging up counters and stove so that Tom could barely find room to make breakfast for himself; featuring all of the household's biggest pots, pans, and colanders; requiring me to empty the compost pail three times before noon; and leaving me with a cramped right hand (peeling two bushels of peaches is not a restful task). But the end results were highly satisfying. Those canned peppers are the prettiest food I've made in quite a while, and they will be a delight this winter alongside roast chicken or pot-au-feu. And while  Maine peaches are the thin, sour cousins of those golden southern beauties, they still cook up handsomely. I may not want to eat them out of hand, but they will make a fine February cobbler.

Altogether this weekend was shockingly productive. On Saturday, before my reading, I even managed to vacuum my car . . . not that I'm driving it much at the moment. Mostly I cleaned it for reasons of wistfulness, and the possibly vain hope that my new vehicle won't devolve into a construction truck when I'm not looking. Loan a car to a carpenter and expect sawdust on the seats and boxes of screws on the floor. Sigh.

Now here we are, back at Monday again, and I need to do my weekly housework, work on my editing project, start prepping for next week's first Monson class. Early on Wednesday morning I'll leave for NYC: it's hard to believe I'll be on the road again so soon, but so goes my new life. I feel lucky to have had such a kitcheny Sunday. I feel lucky to have been able to read poems in the midst of this homestead whirl. I feel lucky to be visiting my two favorite sons in my two favorite cities. The breathlessness can be part of the pleasure, though sometimes I forget that.

At yesterday's reading I brought my crown of sonnets, "The Dead," into the air for the first time. Always, with poems, I hope that I've written something that can hold listeners' attention. But a long poem or sequence is particularly tricky. This has to do with more than maintaining audience focus over many pages. Performing a long poem has to draw those present into emotional communion. I'm struggling to describe what I mean, but when a long poem works in the air I have the sense that the room has become a fragile shell, that each listener is aware of the delicate walls, the currents of feeling, and that all are complicit in keeping this shell intact.

I think this happened with "The Dead" yesterday. And as a result I've been experiencing what usually ensues on such occasions--a postpartum exhaustion . . . not weary in body, but as if some inner reserve has been emptied and washed clean. A stripping-down of the spirit. Even all of these hours later my arms feel heavy, my thoughts slow. Reading those sonnets in public enacted a communal loss. Afterward, people needed to tell me about their own dead. In a way I felt like a sin-eater, responsible for that old ritual task common in Welsh and other Celtic cultures: reading the poem aloud was a way to absolve souls.

What fantastic sleeping weather! It was 49 degrees when I woke up today in the little northern city by the sea, such a treat for a slow Saturday morning. Chuckie finally nagged me into getting up at 6 a.m., but I could have wallowed longer.

Autumn is in the air and I am not sorry. Ah, wood stove, couch blankets, hot cups of tea, the beautiful creeping in of the evening. I love to be snug. Of course there are summer elegies--flowers, ripe tomatoes, bare feet, swimming in a warm pond. But the garden is tiring, and I am ready to let it fade.

Yesterday, after I finished up at my desk, I emptied most of the potted flowers onto the compost heap. It's so extremely dry here, and it's been impossible to keep up with the watering, given my road schedule. A few of the potted plants remain, but only the sturdiest. I also took down the backyard hammock and brought in the hummingbird feeder. It's time to accept that summer is on its way out.

Still, I've got so much harvest produce to deal with. This morning, before I head out for my reading, I'll grind down another batch of basil for the freezer, and maybe work on some parsley as well. I may even have time to string hot peppers . . . they're already washed and waiting; all I need to do is dig out my needle and thread. Tomorrow I'll can pickled peppers and chop up the rest for the freezer. And maybe those bags of peaches will also be ripe enough to process.

Meanwhile, I did draft a poem yesterday, and I started putting together a table of contents for the chapbook, and I copyedited 50 or so pages of a novel. I proposed a topic for a class I'm contracted to teach next month, and did some scheduling, and responded to various emails, and read Ruth Moore's Spoonhandle, which I'm enjoying a great deal.

This afternoon I'll be reading around the corner in Yarmouth. If you're local, and in the mood for words, stop by and give me a hug--

Finally I'm beginning to feel like myself, sleep-wise anyway.  Thus here I am, awake at the usual witching hour, considering the Friday ahead . . . recycling day, laundry day, dealing with piles of peppers and peaches day; but also I am going to write this morning. I accomplished almost nothing writing-wise during our Chicago trek, but I did take lots of notes and photos at the Art Institute's Thorne Miniature Room Collection, all focusing around one 1940s-era room, and I want to consider how those jottings might fit into my current writing projects--specifically the one that's linked to the Sappho annotations.

Still, the editing obligations are pressing, as are the vegetable and fruit jobs. One of T's co-workers has a peach tree and I, of course, am unable to say no to bounty. But the pepper situation is of my own making: I ordered them in bulk from the CSA because they were gorgeous and cheap and relatively easy to process for the freezer. I might pickle and can a batch as well, if I can find the time on Sunday.

Plus, I've got peppers in the garden to deal with: a crop of ripe Serranos that I should string up for drying. And so much basil, parsley, cilantro, and chard . . . wasn't this supposed to be a year of less work?

So, tonight: seared peppers for dinner, tossed with tofu, miso, scallions, lime, and cilantro. And today, poems.

Here's one of my photos of the tiny room . . . you may perceive it as a regular space, but it's in fact dollhouse-sized, like an exact miniature of a noir movie.

Sorry to be coming to you late this morning, but Tom set his alarm for the wrong time, and all three of us (including Chuckie) snoozed blithely on. Actually, I retract that apology. I'm not sorry to be coming to you late. Sleep is the temporary king of this household, and we are all eager to be ruled by him.

Meanwhile, rain fell overnight, and now yesterday's sweater temperatures have morphed into humid warmth and a brisk breeze is kicking up the dry leaves. A few minutes ago Tom managed to get out of the house and head to work--still in my car. We had bad news about his truck, of course. It needs a new rack-and-pinion, an expensive job that can't be tackled till the end of next week, so I still limp along carless. Blah.

Otherwise, I'm trying to return to some semblance of routine. I spent yesterday dealing with laundry, groceries, baking bread, answering emails, and today I'll turn my thoughts to the big editing project that dropped onto my desk while I was in Chicago. Next Wednesday I'll be hitting the road again--this time heading to Brooklyn for a few days--so I'll try to crank out as much editing as I can over the next few days. And then the following week I'll start my Monson Arts year. In between I've got weekend readings--one this Saturday, in Yarmouth; another coming up in Winthrop later in the month. I sure hope Tom's ride is fixed soon.

Yes, I'm alive and home and all is well except that I am extremely underslept. Consider this note a placeholder as I slowly consider the possibility of writing an actual post. Check in here a little later today to find out if I fell asleep face-first into my computer or if I managed to put together a couple of coherent sentences . . .

**

Tom and I left James's house at 8:15 on Monday night and unlocked the door of our own house just before 1 a.m. on Wednesday morning. I instantly fell asleep as soon as I climbed into bed and was 100 percent unconscious until 7 a.m., which is a late hour for me to rise but didn't add up to nearly enough rest to repair the previous two nights' train-trip insomnia and wedding-giddyness insomnia combined with time-zone lag. So pardon all grammatical-logical lapses in this post. I don't really know what it means to be conscious yet.

A few minutes ago I did get up and go downstairs and make coffee and empty the dishwasher. But then I brought the coffee back upstairs and climbed into bed again. So that's as far as I've gotten with my day. Tom has the more daunting task of getting his sick truck to the mechanic this morning. The mechanic is located conveniently around the corner, but the truck has no power-steering fluid, so effort will be expended. I'm glad not to be the one who has to expend it.

Though eventually I, too, will manage to exert myself. Piles of laundry await, as do the curiosities of an empty refrigerator. I need to fetch Chuckie home from the kennel. My email inbox is clogged with obligation. The garden is dry.

Meanwhile, wedding photos are starting to trickle in. Here are a couple more of my guys--James posing in the white suit, Paul playing flower girl.

And here's a little slice of my side of the family--left to right, my brother-in-law Kurt, my nephew Nick and his partner MC, my sister Heather, me clutching a beer can and looking wild-eyed, my son Paul and his partner Lily.

Just a quick note as the train's claim to wifi is symbolic only. I write to you from somewhere between Erie and Buffalo. The sun is glaring into the train's dirty windows, the school buses are stopped safely at the railway crossings, the cafe car is open and serving hot n' tasteless coffee, all of my children are tired and happy, and tomorrow I will muse here about the similarities between camping and an overnight train ride in coach. 

The pride of my heart, all here.

 

 

Yesterday mostly circled around the barbecue party at J and H's house--40 or so people eating and hanging out all afternoon, with our little cohort trying to be as helpful as we could with setup and cleanup and friendliness. Now, on wedding-day morning, all of the family members staying in this hotel are going on a boat tour before beginning the slide toward the evening's formalities. I woke up feeling nervous, which I daresay will not lessen as the day advances. I'll be reading during the ceremony--not my own poems, of course; but still I have to perform, and not cry while reading, and right now that seems hard.

After collapsing into our room's exceedingly comfortable bed, we both woke up yesterday morning feeling much refreshed. Tom found us a place nearby for breakfast, where we ate eggs Benedict and pondered the oddness of living downtown. I've never before spent much time in this part of the city. I always think of Chicago as its neighborhoods--low-slung prewar brick, alleys and taco stands and old warehouses.  But here we are surrounded by steel and glass and Armani stores.

After breakfast we went swimming, and I have to say: this hotel has the fanciest pool ever. It's on the 12th floor, which in itself seems amazing to me--a massive vaulted tiled space, water and air the perfect temperature, and I plan to dawdle here every day. (Full disclosure: using the word swim for what I do in the water greatly exaggerates my abilities. I float, and sometimes wave my arms around and kick a little.)

The wedding rehearsal was at noon, and I am proud to say that I figured out how to get there by bus. I am pretty good at navigating subway systems but always a little daunted by city buses. For some reason Tom and I have been walking in the wrong direction constantly since we've been here. One of us is as bad as the other, so managing the bus felt particularly victorious.

The wedding venue is quite hilarious but also sweet. It's in an old furniture store, so the place is packed with oddities. Outside is a funky overgrown garden where the wedding proper will take place, and inside there's a huge open room, big enough for tables and dance floor, and the 200 vases of flowers that I, along with Hannah's mom and aunt, spent the afternoon filling. That was a massive job, but the room will be lovely with so many blossoms and I'm excited to see it in its overwrought glory.

The day ended back at the hotel, where I found Tom showering off his sweaty afternoon, which he'd spent at James's house prepping for today's welcome party. Once he was clean we walked down the street to a Peruvian place . . . ah, Friday night in downtown Chicago, the young women dressed to the nines and their dates wearing nothing special . . . thick midwest summer air clogging the evening like a blanket . . . 

 Yesterday was so long. Our train ended up being six and a half hours late . . . not just because of the tree damage I told you about yesterday but because there was someone on the track in Indiana, so we had to wait quite a long time for cops to remove him. Unclear if he was in a vehicle or tying himself to the tracks or what, but something was going on.

We finally stepped out of Union Station and into Chicago at 5 p.m., and began our long schlepp to the hotel in 90 degree heat. And then, after unpacking and a quick shower, we headed out for dinner with James. Turns out I was almost too tired to eat, though I hadn't had a real meal for 24 hours, and Tom and I had both stiffened up after the long train ride and were hobbling around like witches. So J kindly drove us back to the hotel, where we collapsed into an exquisitely comfortable bed in front of a Mariners-Athletics game and both slept like rocks.

And now here I am, feeling much refreshed. Tom is currently messing around with the in-room coffee maker, and my younger son Paul is texting me from LaGuardia, and I believe that I have returned to being the kind of person who can hike all around Chicago and stay on my feet all day doing helpful errands for anyone who needs me. I guess we'll find soon out if that's true or not. . . .

Yesterday I said I would greet you this morning from Ohio. That is not the case. At some point overnight the train came to a halt, and now here we are, stopped east of Erie, Pennsylvania, because apparently a big storm dropped trees on the track ahead. The automated text to Tom's phone offers no clue about how long any of this will take. But safe to say, we won't arrive in Chicago anywhere close to on time.

Otherwise, though, the trip has been enjoyable, if drowsy. I've been reading back and forth between the Whitehead and the Penny novels, but I haven't done a lick of writing. Some of the blame has to be chalked up to the Dramamine I took for the bus ride, which sometimes makes me sleepy. But the rattle and roll of a moving train is a soporific in itself--though, at the same time, there's no way to get a solid night's sleep when you're sitting upright in a seat surrounded by people who won't stop talking on their phones.

So I guess that's about it for an update. It's too dark to see out the window. The cafe car isn't open for coffee yet. Somewhere ahead of us people are supposedly chainsawing trees off the track. I believe I'll go back to reading.

It's 5 a.m. in the little northern city by the sea, and a single cricket squeaks in the darkness. The air sifting through the windows is cool and crisp, and for the moment I am happy to be drinking hot coffee and wearing my old red bathrobe. But I have packed for heat. Temperatures in Chicago are supposed to be in the high 80s and 90s all week, with thunderstorms possible most afternoons. I expect to be sweaty and wilting, but at least summer clothes pack tighter than winter clothes do; and without any space-hogging sweaters and boots, I have room to stuff in a few extra clean shirts.

In a couple of hours our friend will arrive to haul us to the bus station, and the wedding adventure will begin: an hour-and-a-half ride to Boston's South Station and then, just after midday, we'll board the Lakeshore Limited and embark on our 22-hour ride to the Windy City. Tom is going to take advantage of the hiatus between bus arrival and train departure to hustle over to Chinatown and pick up takeout for lunch and dinner. It's always good to have fun things to eat on a long train trip.

I did end up acquiring a copy of Whitehead's Crook Manifesto, thanks to the altruistic generosity of my local bookstore owner. She called yesterday morning to say her distributor couldn't get the book to her before I was leaving, so she had checked with other bookstores in town and had tracked down one that had the book on the shelf. This is above-and-beyond service, don't you think? Librarians and booksellers: they are the greatest.

So now I have my four carefully chosen books, a travel cribbage board and a pack of cards, two poem-writing projects, a little notebook for writing down overheard conversations, a few shows to watch on my computer, a late afternoon Red Sox game to listen to, a friendly guy to cuddle up against, some salty snacks, a chocolate bar, a bag of as-yet unchosen Asian takeout, the prospect of a late-day beer from the cafe car, a pillow, a blanket, my toothbrush, the rattle of the rails . . . 

Tomorrow morning I will write to you from Ohio.

Today is departure eve, otherwise known as Don't Forget to Charge the Headphones I Hardly Ever Use Day and Will the Book I Ordered Be In Day and (sob) Chuckie Has to Go to the Cat Kennel Day. I hate parting with my darling Big Kitten, but he doesn't have the moxie to stay alone in the house for a week. So T will work a short day and come home for lunch, and then I will load up the Chuckster and drive him away to his motel.

Fingers crossed: things seem to have settled down in Vermont, and as of last night my sister was still planning to come to the wedding, which is a great relief to me. Nothing is easy here: she's got to figure out how to best get through O'Hare with a broken ankle, but she's eager for the party, and I am eager to hug her.

It looks like we might get some rain this afternoon, which is a very good thing. So I'll go for my walk this morning and then turn my thoughts to laundry and a few desk tasks--which will include choosing which two Grimm tales I want to focus on in my November Poetry Kitchen class. Over the past couple of months I've been steadily making my way through the tome of stories, taking notes on possibilities but not coming to conclusions. The time has come for me to pin down a pair so that when I return from Chicago I can jump straight into designing the class.

Who knew sitting on the couch reading fairy tales could count as work?

Monday morning of wedding week also happens to be the first day of school in Portland, so I expect to witness scads of shiny new sneakers and backpacks this morning when I'm out on my walk. Stevens Avenue, the main drag in this neighborhood, is home to Longfellow Elementary, Lincoln Middle School, and Deering High, all sited within a quarter mile of one another. So kids throng thick and fast around here on a school day.

Tom and I spent much of yesterday communally packing, and we did eventually manage to fit everything into our luggage, though not always in the places we'd envisioned. Tom's dress shoes are now tucked into my suitcase, and my wedding gift is sandwiched in Tom's garment bag, but they're packed, and that's what matters. Meanwhile, all day long, we were also anxious: my dad had a sudden health crisis, and it seemed possible that my sister and her husband might not be able to leave my parents to come to the wedding. As of last night, things seem to have settled down, but life in Vermont is perpetually dicey.

Today I'll deal with my regular Monday chores: clean bathrooms, wash floors, water the garden, catch up on desk work. If I have time I might freeze a batch of chard or process some basil or parsley, but if I don't get to that stuff, fine. This is why I have a small garden this year: so I don't need to fret over any of it.

I've been working on some poem revisions, and I've also got a writing project reserved for the train--a Poetry Lab idea involving a written musical phrase that Teresa, Jeannie, and I have broken into three sections. Each of us will take one part and use it as a prompt in some way. Because my section resembles train tracks, I thought I would use the sounds and sights of the train trip as part of my material. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.

Meanwhile, Tom will have the window seat and a gorgeous new-to-him camera to play with, so the two of us will be contentedly preoccupied.

You see that I am trying to stay happy and forward-thinking. But I am worried about my fragile parents, and about my sister who (if she's able to leave) will be traveling with a broken ankle. Optimism can be hard work.

Another cool morning, though if it's like yesterday temperatures will heat up quickly. Still, for the moment I'm enjoying the coziness of a bathrobe and hot coffee. Although my hair loves humidity, the rest of me is not too sorry that autumn is on the way.

Outside a catbird is squawking, a plane is taking off, but otherwise it is blessedly quiet, for a change. We've had a crew of wacko tree guys in the neighborhood for the past couple of days. They did not exude competence for all kinds of reasons--including the fact that they preferred to chainsaw in the dark and didn't really know how to back up their trailers. However, they must be dirt cheap because they kept moving from one yard to another, apparently with homeowner approval, though I don't think they knew a thing about trees other than Cut them down! and they exuded the ambience of bleary-eyed denizens of the VFW. Anyway, here's hoping they are finally gone.

I cleared out some flowerbeds and did some weeding yesterday but, more importantly, I finally got my compost bins emptied and the big pile turned before the leaves begin to fall in earnest. It wasn't a huge job but it was heavy and hot and dirty, and I'm glad to have it out of my hair. Last weekend, firewood; this weekend, compost--all so I can focus on next weekend: wedding. To the dulcet strains of a Red Sox-Yankees doubleheader, I spent much of the rest of the day making a giant, complicated, cross-checked list of everything I need to bring to Chicago, which is way, way too much stuff. Fortunately, several years ago I decided to buy both a purse and a backpack that are slightly too small, and you'd be amazed at how much that's helped me manage what I pack. At least it amazes my kids. When I told Paul I was bringing only four books on this trip, he was shocked. He'd guessed at least six.

Today I'll haul out the trimmer and deal with the grass, such as it is, and I'll do the grocery shopping while I still have my car available. And I'll figure out something or other for dinner. Last night I made a beautiful ratatouille--summer squash, colorful peppers, heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, sweet onion, freshly cured garlic, fistfuls of basil. We ate it alongside steamed mixed grains; local cantalope tossed with agave nectar, rice vinegar, and fresh mint; and, of all things, Salisbury steak. If you think of Salisbury steak as TV dinner fodder, think again. The homemade version--tender meat patties simmered in mushroom gravy--is entirely delicious and, for two people who are juggling leftovers, it's a more manageable version of meatloaf. I happened to make these with ground beef, but they'd be good with ground chicken or turkey as well.

I'm enjoying a slow start today: a treat, given my usual early-morning extremes. It's already full daylight outside. Goldfinches are chirping among the bachelors' buttons, and an angry squirrel is sputtering why you oughta, no doubt a walnut-related tiff with another squirrel. That walnut tree does not promote neighborhood harmony. The local squirrels spend all day every day being furious with each other over who's eating a walnut, who took the other's walnut: gripe, gripe, gripe from dawn till dusk. They'll have a lot of fences to mend once the season is over.

I did manage to get to my haircut appointment yesterday, thanks to my neighbor's car, and I also messed around with poem revision and even, to my surprise, submitted a few pieces to a journal. I don't know what came over me: usually I'll scrub toilets rather than submit poems. But now I need to turn my thoughts to yard work and errand running, and no doubt I'll be juggling phone calls and emails about wedding stuff and wrestling with the impossibilities of packing and trying to remember to do dull things like get the mail held.

Anyway, for the moment, I'm not doing anything other than write to you, which is restful. One large issue about this long trip is the question of how many books do I bring? We've got two 20-hour train rides to fill, which I calculate as requiring at least four books. They need to be paperbacks, for reasons of weight and space, and they must be the sort of books one can enjoy in distracting circumstances: thus, no Henry James or Moby-Dick.

The idea is to pair two paperbacks for each leg of the trip. Plus, I've got a writing project I'll be working on, some shows to watch, probably some baseball games to listen to. Tom and I will play cards and eat snacks. Possibly we'll even sleep a little. But the book choice is central.

Thus, last week I ordered Colson Whitehead's Crook's Manifesto from the bookstore (though now  I'm starting to worry that it won't come in on time). I felt it would offer the correct level of enjoyment for a train trip: familiar likable characters in a situation I haven't yet read about, in a landscape I enjoy; some snappy prose and a little suspense along the way. But I needed three more books, so I went to the library yesterday morning to see what paperback novels might be available. My library branch is very small so I knew the choices would be limited. On the other hand, my criteria were simple: I haven't read it before; the quality of the prose won't drive me to drink; the book will immerse me in a place and a situation that I find interesting in some way. 

This is what I came home with:

Ruth Moore's Spoonhandle (1946): Moore grew up on Gotts Island, a fishing community off Southwest Harbor, Maine, and became a fine regional novelist. This is her second book, set in the Depression, and dealing with locals versus summer people. I know the landscape well because this is where T and I go twice a year when we stay on Mount Desert Island at our friend's cottage. Downside: slightly too fat for backpack comfort. Plus side: Moore is a good prose stylist, and knows how to dispense irony.

Annie Ernaux's A Man's Place (1983): Ernaux won the Nobel a couple of years ago, but thus far I've only read one of her books, which was about big-box stores in contemporary France. This one is older: a memoir about her father, born into a laboring family who, according to the back cover, made "a slow ascent toward material comfort" while remaining difficult and distant with his wife and children. Plus-and-minus: very thin, so ideal for a backpack but not for enduring entertainment. Also, I didn't adore the book of hers I read before, though I do think about it often, so I am willing to try again. And I like learning about France.

Louise Penny's The Cruelest Month (2007): You already know who Louise Penny is, but I've only read one of her mysteries before. However, I did read it on vacation, so I can attest that it held up very well during a week of cold wet weather in a drafty cottage, a week punctuated by three naps per day and too much red wine with dinner. Like most of her procedurals, this one is set in Quebec, and I recall enjoying the immersion in its landscape and its French-English cultural push-pull. Also, the characters were various and easy to tell apart and I didn't instantly figure out the ending, so that was entertaining. Downsides: Slightly cringy prose style that may force me to exclaim "Why aren't you John Le Carre?" Also this copy is kind of beat up. Can it endure an overstuffed backpack?

Another heavy, sticky morning, but as far as I can tell, no rain fell overnight. Our drought goes on and on. 

And this household is back in vehicle limbo for the foreseeable future. Tom can't get anyone to look at his truck's power steering till after we return from Chicago, so once again I am carless. I know I shouldn't be grouchy about this, but I am a little. I've already spent too much of this summer borrowing other people's cars and begging for rides, and I hate having to start all over again. But Tom needs to take my car to work, so I am stuck.

Thus, today I'll be driving my generous neighbor's car across town so I can get my hair cut. Under normal circumstances I might just cancel the appointment, but that's not really an option on wedding-countdown week.

Otherwise, the day is fairly open. I'm working on a poem draft as well as web copy for next summer's conference. I'm rereading Byatt's Whistling Woman. I may start sussing out my November Poetry Kitchen class or the workshop I'll be leading at the Belfast Poetry Festival in October. I've got a couple of smaller appearances to prep for: a morning at a Jersey City high school in September, a morning in a Bates College class in October. And my Monson Arts high school classes begin in late September.

Yesterday I met with my friend Gibson, who's the executive director of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. He wanted to talk about how the organization can support me--specifically, through grant writing and promotion and helping to set up programming around the state. It was a really helpful conversation. Of course I need all the aid I can get with that sort of administrative work. But it was also good just to talk to a knowledgeable friend about the odd discomforts of the position: its amorphous expectations, its political undertow. I have a fairly clear idea about who I am as a poet in private life. But the public role remains mysterious.

What he made clear was that I need to do what I already know how to do: work with kids and teachers, work with community members . . . but also read books and write poems and continue being a striving, active maker. I already knew this internally, but it was good to hear it from someone else. A lot of people have a lot of ideas about what I should be doing, and I haven't always been able to align them with my actual capacities. Imposter syndrome is incurable. But it is possible to stop paying attention to it.

Last night's dreams have left a blur of sadness. They weren't scary; more, poignant, elegiac. But suddenly what arises most vividly is a bright bowl of freshly harvested, high-bush cranberries sitting on a table in front of me, and my hands in them, cleaning out stalks and stems. The jewel red of the berries, the pallor of my hands. I wasn't the main character of these dreams, more like a Nick Carraway kind of observer. Other family members came and went, ages all mismatched, old ones young, young ones aging, and the place was the Pennsylvania farm, setting of my summer childhood, but I was only a watcher, cleaning cranberries at a kitchen table, though the fruit has no real-life association with that place. Dreams are so very odd.

Yesterday ended up being a mishmash of errands as I spent way too much time driving around mall land trying to track down a few small items for next week's adventure. But wasting hours in South Portland turned out to be the right choice because, as T was pulling out of our parking space after last night's movie outing, the power steering in his truck suddenly died. He did manage to get us home, but not easily, which means that Gloria the shiny Mazda is going to have to take over as construction vehicle for the next few days. The timing isn't terrible as I'm not on the road for work until after we get back from Chicago. But I do have to figure out how I'm going to get across town for my haircut tomorrow. I guess I'll think of something.

Today I have two afternoon meetings scheduled, but the morning will be quiet. Maybe I'll look at notebook blurts or start drafting web copy for next summer's conference. I could start putting together class plans, but I don't think I'll worry about that quite yet. Maybe I'll work in the garden, if the sun's not too hot.

I'm unsure, undecided, unmoored. I don't know what I want for the hours or what will happen. It's not a bad state to be in. Maybe the dreams are still dreaming. Outside, a flock of gulls spirals overhead, screeching, complaining. Inside, Young Chuck paddles a paw in his chow dish. Upstairs, T sighs. The bed creaks as he turns onto his side. The small sounds of home life, layering against dream life, the private, inscrutable country of ghosts.

This morning I'm feeling sad about Dolly Parton's death, yet what a good life . . . a model for how to nurture both the self and generosity of spirit. I was a child in 1970s Appalachia, so I have a fish-eye awareness of the details of the world she sang about, and dramatized, and embodied, and performed. How does one portray trashy with love, not with condescension or self-loathing? I use the term here because my own family wrestled with it directly, veering between comic embrace and shame. I remember, after first meeting my dear friend Ray, he asked me if my relatives were trashy. He himself was from Appalachian Kentucky: for him, the term was a secret handshake. We would know something precious and vulnerable about one another if we faced it.

Dolly figured this all out. And how to laugh and be deeply serious at the same time. How to celebrate but not sugarcoat a heritage. How to change her tune when change was necessary. I am honored to have shared the planet with her.

**

Yesterday's school thing at Merrill Auditorium seemed to go well enough . . . at least, the listeners laughed and sighed in the right places, so I'm hoping the poem got across okay. It was very odd to read to such a massive audience. I couldn't help but recall my own entree into the world of Maine education: as a long-term substitute music teacher for 90 kids in a K-8 school in rural Somerset County--a far cry from 1,500 staff members across multiple sites in the biggest city in the state. Of course, in the grand scheme of city schools, the Portland system is tiny, not a patch on New York City or Chicago. But I daresay my Monson high schoolers would have been flummoxed at the sight of so many faces. The difference between our rural schools and our urban schools is vast. 

After I got home, I did manage to finish and ship that editing project. So today I'll be catching up on some smaller desk tasks, running a few errands, maybe weeding a flowerbed, maybe working on a poem draft. Tonight T and I will go out to watch an old Robert Mitchum noir called Out of the Past. It's nice to have a looser day ahead, a clear-ish desk, an evening to anticipate.

It's a touch cooler and less humid this morning than it has been. A breath of autumn sifts through the screens, and the wren's tea kettle tea kettle tea kettle is a little more subdued. One ripe walnut, then another, clonks down from the neighbors' tree, a sign that as soon as night lifts the local squirrels will hurl themselves back into harvest hysteria.

This morning I've got my big school event to get through, and afterward maybe I'll manage to finish the editing project--if not today, then certainly tomorrow. Given that it's a 500-pager, I'm relieved I've been able to plow through it so steadily. But it needs to be off my desk, and soon.

Suddenly the neighborhood falls silent, the only sound the bare murmur of the highway in the distance. Even the wren is mute, even the crickets. But now a cardinal speaks--cheer, cheer, chip chip chip--a cricket responds, in the half-dark a squirrel scuttles toward the walnut tree, and the day resumes.

I'm thinking about today's big event but I'm not feeling too nervous. Schools don't tend to make me anxious, though government events apparently do. I more or less know where I am with teachers, even when they're crabby. And surely a tale about a hapless middle school basketball team will lift a few spirits. That's my intent, anyway. To tell a good story. To help them forget to be scared by poems.

Night-morning, soft, black, damp. All windows open; air waves dense with cicadas and crickets. Above their thick racket a single whistling cardinal: Cheer, cheer, cheer, cheer. 

But already the black is moderating to gray. The neighbors' pale house looms. Sky flickers among branches. The cardinal falls silent as the insects drone on.

This will be a packed week: the big Portland Public Schools event tomorrow; meetings on Thursday; and all the while cranking away at that editing project; catching up on harvest stuff; undertaking the frivolous chores of wedding prep, like making sure I get my hair cut.

And Monday, as usual, is housework day--wrestling with bathrooms and floors, then buckling down to desk work, though I am going to take a break for a midmorning walk with a friend.

Yesterday I dealt with grass and watering; harvested another bushel of chard; baked a plum cake. I've still got my herb crops to work on this week: I need to freeze basil and parsley, cut sage for air-drying, pack up the already-dry oregano and thyme. Thank goodness I didn't plant a real vegetable garden this year. I would be insane right now, and I'm already a little bit crazed as it is.

We got a spit of rain yesterday afternoon, but nothing that counts as real moisture. We might get a few more drops today but they won't be the deep, days-long rain we need. Drought is settling in, and it's disheartening.

Still, without rain I was able to finish the firewood job yesterday. I trundled the rest of the seasoned logs from shed to basement hatch, tossed them in, then stacked everything, organized kindling, swept the bark mess up from the floor, and now chilly nights can arrive whenever they feel like it. I will have another round of firewood chores: in a couple of weeks we'll get a delivery of green logs that will need to be stacked in the woodshed, where they will dry out for next winter's use. But the basement transfer always feels especially big. I love the sight of a swept floor, tidy stacks, everything neat and utilitarian and ready for winter.

Today I'll deal with grass, such as it is. The only thing green in the lawn is straggly crabgrass, but it sure does like to grow, even without water. Then Tom and I will work on wrapping wedding gifts, which is more complicated than it sounds because we also need to figure out how to carry them in our luggage. And our luggage situation will be extra complicated, not only because of the gifts but also because of wedding outfits and the two overnights we'll be spending on the train.

For the moment, though, I'm just happy to be enjoying Sunday morning--two cups of coffee instead of one, the pleasure of knowing that T is upstairs in bed instead of flying out the door to work, a comfortable idle alone in my couch corner . . . 

Firewood in the cellar, sauce in the freezer, poems in the notebook. Let the winds howl.

Yesterday was dominated by tomatoes. I started cutting up vegetables for the stock pots at 8 a.m., and we sat down for dinner just before 8 p.m. The job still isn't quite over--I need to ladle the finished sauce into freezer boxes--but the cooking/pureeing/cooking-again stages are done.

So that's one big late-summer chore completed. Now if I can finish moving firewood into the basement this weekend, I'll feel even better. I've do have one more week at home before we leave for Chicago, but it's speckled with meetings and events. In the meantime, T is shopping for a new front door. That has become his big pressing project. The casing is rotting away, and the sag and gaps have gotten extreme, but as usual with home repairs, side issues are complicating matters--in this case the rickety wooden front stoop that some previous terrible handyman built over an existing busted-up brick one. The whole thing is going to have to be removed before T can get the old door casing out and the new one in. Blah.

Anyway, that's the Alcott House update for Saturday, August 22, 2026. Tuesday marked our 9-year anniversary of owning this place, and it remains shabby and mostly unrenovated, but such is life with a carpenter who has to work full time for somebody else. Still, we are heading into winter with a brand-new furnace and a reliable car and a free foraged dishwasher, and plenty of firewood and tomato sauce and blueberries and wild mushrooms, and it looks like we might get a new front door as well. Plus, I cannot forget the fantastic daughter-in-law we're about to acquire. So do not think I am complaining.

No dreams and a solid sleep last night, thank goodness. And now it's Friday, and my thoughts are turning toward the kitchen. Yesterday I brought home twenty pounds of canning tomatoes, so today is sauce day: chopping up and cooking down piles of tomatoes, peppers, onions, and herbs; grinding the softened vegetables through the hand mill; then simmering the puree with a knob of butter and a pinch of sugar until it starts to thicken. It will be an all-day affair, though with plenty of space for me to work at my desk, toss firewood, even wander down to the bookstore and choose a couple of treats for my long train trip.

In Harmony I usually had to buy tomatoes in bulk if I wanted to preserve anything for the winter. My garden just didn't get enough late-summer sun, and the growing season was so short. Here, I could grow enough on my own, but I was still mostly ripening them in the house: sauce was always a late-September task.

Now that I've reduced my vegetable plots, I'm back to relying on bulk field crops, and that is just fine. These tomatoes are cheap, gorgeous, and organic; the peppers and herbs are from my own overflowing plants; and I'll have to break down and buy grocery-store onions, but oh well. For a non-Italian I'm a pretty good Italian cook. This evening I'll be packing the freezer with divine homemade sauce, and what could be better? Drop by for some ziti, why don't you?

I am just now attempting to recover from a horrendous night of insomnia bracketed by terrible dreams, which began when I woke in a panic about the hole under our front door (we really do have a hole but the panic was manufactured by my brain) and ended with dream-me helplessly watching a car careen around the downtown roads and then crash full speed into a tree in the park, at which moment the alarm went off.

Not surprisingly, I'm still stunned. The transition between dream and waking was so abrupt, the dreams themselves so vicious, that I can't quite believe I've returned to the world of the living.

But here's the Carolina wren singing. Here's the cup of hot black coffee. Here's Chuckie, clanking his breakfast dish. I must be home again. I hope so, I really do.

It's Thursday, as far as I can recall. The miasma must be beginning to lift  . . . Ahead, the usual tasks wave their small flags at me. Stripping the bed. Washing the sheets. Walking. Firewood. Editing.

It's always difficult to transfer dreams onto the page. Nightmares in particular look so thin, sometimes even comic. But these dreams had nothing comic about them. My panic about the hole under the door was panic only . . . it had no accompanying narrative, no beast tunneling into the house, no embodied force of evil. In contrast, the car crash dream was all too vivid. I sat helplessly on the curb, among many other people, watching the moment unfold. The car was a white 60s-era muscle car, red-trimmed, broad and low-slung. The unseen driver seemed to have no control of the steering wheel. The car clipped one sidewalk, bounced into another, spinning, airborne; then hit the ground, and purposefully sped straight into a giant oak.

There are things as a poet I don't want to write about but feel obliged to write about. Bad dreams are not in that category. I don't want to write about them. I just want them to go away. Nonetheless, they do creep into my poems, even as I try to keep them out. My long poem, "Mr. Kowalski," arose from a bad dream.

I hope this car-crash dream doesn't become a poem, but I don't have control over that, apparently. Already I've said too much about it.

Another humid half-dark dawn--crickets pumping out their repetitions, a wren's song ornamenting them. I like the way night begins to set its claim at this time of year, clinging to morning, encroaching on evening: a preview of sweaters and lamplight and wood fires, even when the air is still fully summer's.

So far the week has been a desk-and-firewood grind, as it's needed to be. I must get this editing project done and this firewood stacked before I leave for Chicago. But this afternoon I'll take a bit of a break and spend a couple of hours talking to Teresa and Jeannie about our Sappho prompts. I think I may have gone overboard with my responses, but what else is new.

In the meantime, an interesting thing has happened: I got an email from an administrator in the superintendent's office at the Portland Public Schools. Turns out she's a Haverford alum who read the article about me in the magazine, and she invited me to speak and read at a gathering of all 1,500 district employees at the big downtown auditorium next Tuesday. Naturally I said yes: the idea of reading my comic middle school basketball poem to a big crowd of school folks fills me with delight. I may squirm at photo ops, but hanging around with teachers is my bread and butter, and I am always ready to try to make them happy. What's more, I now have a contact in the superintendent's office who wants to meet with me about district professional development, etc., and I am already simmering thoughts about ways to use this as an opportunity to bring together not just city teachers but those in districts beyond Portland. I'm feeling hopeful and excited, which is a good change from feeling nervous and overwhelmed.

A little rain fell yesterday--not nearly as much as the garden needs, but enough to prevent me from hauling firewood after I'd finished up my desk chores for the day. There is nothing good about handling wet logs. But I did get the house cleaned, and I did work my way through a hundred pages of editing, so stuff was accomplished.

Today: another giant editing push, another round of firewood hauling. That's the kind of week this will be.

A wind-breath, thick and damp, fumbles at the open windows. In the semi-darkness a Carolina wren solos above a cricket-drone continuo. Chuckie crunches up some chow in the kitchen.

Yesterday evening I got notice that the Academy of American Poets has posted three of my poems on its website. All are from previously published books; if you're one of this blog's eight regular readers, you've probably seen them before. But the fact is: this is the first time that a major national poetry clearinghouse has ever taken notice of my work.

I know the state laureateship was the trigger for the invitation, a blip on the po-biz radar that suddenly made me visible. I'm pleased, of course, and also gratified--even this small bit of national recognition feels like candy. But at age 61, I'm also bemused. I've been writing intensely for 30 years, and over the decades the audience for my work has increased from nonexistent to small. It's easy, and obvious, to carp about invisibility, to yearn for fame. But invisibility is also extremely cozy. And I'm not, in retrospect, at all sorry to have spent so many years under a blanket, flashlight in hand, writing and writing and writing.

It was a good weekend for getting home stuff done. Yesterday I sowed arugula and spinach for the fall, lugged about a third of the firewood from the shed into the basement and stacked it there, caught up with groceries, and then T and I walked over to the University of New England's art gallery to look at a puzzling show of avant-garde musical notation--compelling in its way, but difficult to imagine into sound, though I am considering the potential of using one of the examples as a structural writing prompt. Still, the show was interesting if confounding, and we had a good walk together.

Today: housework, and then I'll start a new editing project, which I expect will consume much of my desk time this week. I need to finish dealing with firewood; I should turn my compost pile before the leaves start to fall. I'm expecting a delivery of twenty pounds of canning tomatoes later in the week, so Friday is already scheduled as sauce and freezer day. However, I also yanked my back yesterday afternoon (while sitting in a chair shucking corn: so stupid), and while it's feeling better this morning, I ought to remember not to be an idiot, and that is often hard for me.

Thanks, everyone, for the kind words about the crown of sonnets. I still can't quite believe I wrote it, but poems can be like that sometimes. A subject demands its form.

Yesterday I harvested a bushel of chard, a half-bushel of parsley, a half-bushel of basil--amazing production from this tiny plot of mine--which tied me down to a morning spent cleaning and processing for the freezer. Then I figured I might as well keep going with the kitchen fun, so I simmered a batch of sauce (tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, baby leeks), baked a peach-blueberry crisp, and eventually dropped a batch of meatballs into the sauce and served it over penne.

If you like tender, velvety meatballs, you ought to try mine. They are outstanding in fresh summer sauce, and I brag with confidence, even with zero Italian blood in my veins.

Yesterday, between kitchen jobs, I messed around with my Sappho drafts, updated blog pages, answered emails, read the Byatt novel, went for a walk. There will probably be more such this-and-thats today, amid firewood hauling and lettuce sowing and grocery shopping, and a drive down to the fish market to buy salmon for dinner. Among other things, T and I are starting to match up our calendars so that we can figure out how our schedules will overlap this fall. He's decided to come with me on a few of my work jaunts, which I love, though we won't always be able travel together. Still, just knowing he's around, or on his way; that we can meet up somewhere on an evening: the thought does assuage my homebody yearnings.

***

You might remember, earlier this summer, my excitement about accidentally writing a crown of sonnets. Well, the sequence is out now, in the current issue of Hole in the Head Review, if you're interested in seeing how the project unfolded.

Last night's baseball game was just about perfect: balmy temperatures, a fun crowd, three homers for the Sea Dogs (after each of which a cheesy lighthouse rose portentously from behind the centerfield wall and shot off a few delightfully lame sparklers), a fantastic throw-on-a-dime-from-left-field out at second, and even a pitching position player! This game had everything: plus, a long sweet stroll to and fro, a beer and a steak sandwich, and a fireworks show afterward. It was likely the only time we'll get to the park this summer, and what a good night we chose.

To Chuck's chagrin, I wallowed in bed a little too long this morning, no doubt thanks to the fine sleeping weather (56 degrees this morning, the coolest it's been for weeks). But now Big Kitten breakfast has been served, coffee brewed and carried up to the dozy guy still in bed, and I am curled into my couch corner, happy to be wrapped in ye olde warm red bathrobe, looking forward to enjoying my Saturday morning second cup of coffee--pleasantly aimless, a weekend at home ahead.

I've got a few chores I could do--plant a fall crop of salad greens; start moving firewood into the basement. But I'm also completely willing to be sidetracked. Right at this moment I'm a cat with the dregs of a bowl of cream, a spider with a neatly packaged fly--which is another way of saying, I drafted six poems I like yesterday.

Six! All day I wrote and wrote, and wandered, and wrote, and read and reread, and fidgeted, and wandered and wrote, and lay on my back, and wandered again, and wrote, and tinkered, and wrote. Six poems, all of which contain the same eleven words--sometimes fractured, sometimes exact. The words are Sappho's Fragment 53 in Anne Carson's English translation. I can't write them out for you here because the translation is under copyright, so look it up yourself if you care to. All I can say is that the words gave me characters, and a family situation, and a setting; a completely unrelated photograph entered the fray; and then my imagination could not stop fizzing.

Yesterday's six poems are only half the story. Over the past week I'd already written six others. Together they are becoming a tale-in-verse, set in the 1940s, in an American city . . . and yet the Sappho source material remains alive.

A day like yesterday is heaven.

Unlikely as rain seemed in yesterday's forecast, chance came through like a champ: we not only enjoyed a decent steady rain for a couple of hours in the morning but had a late-afternoon thunderstorm that transformed the street into a riverbed. Other neighborhoods dealt with wind and hail and uprooted trees, but all I saw here was downpour and plenty of it. There's always a lot of runoff with that kind of storm, but some of it soaked into the gardens, and some rain is way, way better than the nothing we had before.

It was a good day all around. I saw a bluebird during my a walk in the cemetery. I baked a lemon-brown butter loaf cake that came out really well. I wrote three new poem drafts linked to my self-imposed Sappho prompt. I read a chunk of the Byatt novel, washed bed linens, talked to my kid on the phone, went out to write in the evening with my friends.

Today will be another home day, and then in the evening T and I will stroll over to Hadlock Stadium to watch our first (and only) Sea Dogs game of the season. Sometimes we get to the stadium a few times during the season, but this one has been so crowded. I feel lucky we managed to snag an evening . . . and now a balmy forecast, fireworks afterward. Baseball is a fine way to play-act the sweetness of summer.

Will it rain today? The forecast is for slight chance followed by chance, neither of which sounds promising. I did water the garden yesterday morning, so I guess I can postpone till the afternoon and see what's what then. For now we have another dim and humid birdsong morning, rumble of plane and train, the little city rubbing its eyes, reaching for its coffee.

Yesterday's radio date went well enough, I think. It was fun to chatter into a mike, and I enjoyed the station's bustle of music and people. The show is called Passionate People and it's archived somewhere on the WMPG site, so you can listen if you feel like it.

As far as I can recall, I don't have any obligations written on the calendar for today, other than tonight's writing group. That means I can keep working on my Sappho poems, keep working on chapbook ideas, keep rereading A. S. Byatt's The Virgin in the Garden, which I pulled off the shelf yesterday after finishing the baseball book. I'll wash sheets, maybe get to dealing with the basil crop or freezing chard. Or maybe I'll just mess around with words all day. That would be an unexpected luxury.

Whatever else transpires, I will go for a walk this morning. Walking rhythms are always a big help to me when I feel as if I'm on the edge of a burst of writing. Inhabiting that cadence both settles my fidgets and urges my wordlessness into the air. I won't call those fragments thoughts, because I'm not really a thinking poet, at least not at the earliest stages of a poem. But, for whatever reason, walking is sometimes a way to start saying.

This morning I'm being interviewed on WMPG, the radio station of the University of Southern Maine, 10 a.m., if you're interested in listening in. It's been years since I've done a radio interview, so I forget how the whole rigmarole works, but I bet it will come back to me quickly--as long I don't start getting hyperaware of my small speech imperfections: how I pop p and blur s . . . things I never notice in daily speech but that sometimes leap into my awareness during readings and recordings and such.

The interview will be just a half-hour blip out of the morning, and then I'll walk home and get back to work on a Poetry Lab prompt that's turning out to be quite productive. Teresa, Jeannie, and I decided to play with Sappho fragments, and I've been reusing the same one over and over in different ways to create a series of linked character-sketch poems. In the afternoon Teresa and I will talk about Aurora Leigh, and at some point in the day I'll water the garden and harvest basil for pesto. Plus, I've got eggplant and peppers and tomatoes and fresh onions--a bounty waiting for me to invent something wonderful for dinner.

Yesterday I caught up on mowing, weeding, and a few other garden chores, meaning that for the moment my homestead demands are minimal--just the usual daily laundry and cooking. So I'm glad the Sappho prompt is making me excitable, just when I have a little time and space to play.

And both boys phoned yesterday, and I went for a lunchtime walk with another of my favorite young people, someone I've known since she was two years old . . . and nothing matches the lift in my heart when I hear any of those dear voices on the other end of the line. The wedding, of course, is a primary topic, but despite the annoyance of the expense and the fret over plans, what we talk about is our excitement about being together at this big and wonderful party, dressed up in our silly loud outfits, playing our roles, being giddy and joyous together. 

We might have gotten a few drops of rain overnight, but nothing useful. The garden is hot and tired, the grass is spindly and brown, yet the humidity is so high that I can't convince any laundry to dry on the outside lines. It's difficult to dredge up enthusiasm for yard work.

Still, this morning I'll water, and maybe do some trimming and pruning. I'm meeting a friend for a noon walk, and Chuck has his annual vet checkup midafternoon, but the early hours are mine. So once I muscle through the outdoor chores and today's emails and paperwork, I might be able sit down for an hour or so and think about new poems, or even the chapbook. I hope so.

Yesterday I caught up on my Aurora Leigh reading, and I'm still slowly making my way through Grimm as well as the Dan Barry book about that 33-inning Pawtucket Red Sox game. It's difficult to feel brisk during these dog days. But one bright spot is tomato season, and yesterday I used up some of our beauties in gazpacho. My favorite recipe is an old M.F.K. Fisher version from the 1940s that calls for crushing the herbs and vegetables with pestle and then adding "half a glass of olive oil" and "a few glasses of water." A juice glass? A water tumbler? I love having no idea.

***

If you're interested, that article about me is out in the current issue of Haverford. I'm not sure my path to being a poet was exactly "unlikely," but I guess the word made a good headline.

It was another brutally hot day driving yesterday, but the town cooled down a little over night, so this morning I turned off the A/C and opened the house windows, and now Chuck is happily ensconced beside the screen door. He survived his two bachelor days without problem: our neighbor dropped by to give him his breakfast and remind him that he was adored, and there are no signs that he reverted to his youthful gut problems while we were gone. But since our return, he has spent all of his time in our laps or in our bed or whirling around our ankles, so clearly he is relieved that the band is back together again.

And here comes Monday . . . housework, garden work, desk work, and an enthusiastic, still-a-little-bit-worried cat. Though we were only gone for two nights, I feel like I've slipped out of gear somehow. What is it that I'm supposed to be doing around here?

Now the big Chicago trip looms, and these remaining August days are scattered on the path like breadcrumbs.

The heat just keeps simmering, but yesterday after dinner T and I finally got out for a walk. This part of Vermont was settled as dairy country, orchard country--open rolling fields, orderly trees: a domesticated prettiness that is nothing at all like the scrabbled forests, compressed skies, and stony dooryards of central Maine. The residents of these places are equally different from one another. Still, both regions are labeled rural New England, as if merely not being city or suburb drops them into the same bucket.

I wonder if I would become a poet if I'd spent a quarter-century in the Champlain Valley instead of Somerset County, Maine. There's something so visually unchallenging about this landscape, whereas Harmony confounded me at every turn.

Of course there is struggle everywhere. I would have wrestled, no matter where I was. Something would have happened.

But what happened to me was the woods.

Dog in Winter

Dawn Potter 

 

Up the boggy headland, frozen now, where a stone fence

Submerged in snow and earth-sink hints at pasture

So long vanished that the woods are convinced

Grassland never existed, two bodies climb—one fast,

Black, doe-agile; one slogging and foot-bound

Like a superannuated tortoise.  Guess which is me.

Easy to badmouth my grace but oddly hard to expound

On the postcard beauties of our workaday scenery—

Giant pines draped with frosting, wisp of chimney cloud

Threading skyward, and behind the frosted window

A glorious wall of books, lamp-lit; a dear bowed head.

In tales, common enchantment always merits less than woe,

            And perhaps I should collapse on the stoop like a starved Jane Eyre,

            Pleading heat and mercy. But I earn my joy. I mean, I live here.

 

[from Same Old Story (CavanKerry Press, 2014)] 

We arrived at my sister's place in Vermont just as night and a rainstorm were settling in. Gloria did beautifully on her longest adventure to date, and her fancy features--those blind-spot alerts, for instance--really do take some of the stress out of highway driving. I felt almost relaxed behind the wheel.

Things are unusually loosey-goosey here as my sister, who is her household's action-packed organizer, broke her ankle a couple of weeks ago and is more or less tied to the couch. So she won't be charging off into fast walks or rounding up everyone for Fun. And my parents certainly won't be. It will be a weekend of sitting, which is just as well because the weather is terrible--hot and drippingly humid. Yesterday, when we stopped at the rest area in New Hampshire around 6:30 p.m., temperatures were still in the 90s. I like all kinds of weather, but this stuff is a challenge.

I brought two books to read: Aurora Leigh and Dan Barry's history of the longest game in baseball history--the 33-inning game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings that took place in Rhode Island on Easter weekend in 1981. I was a junior in high school at the time, only a few miles away from McCoy Stadium, so for me the book is an evocation of time and place as well as the tale of a game. The book is a bit sentimental, as sportswriting can be, but the whiff of early 1980s Rhode Island is hard for me to resist.

The humidity around here has become ridiculous, and the A/C, reluctantly turned on last night, has thus far barely made a dent.

We're both groggy this morning because we had our second bat incident of the summer, which was unfortunate as T has to work all day and then we'll be driving to Vermont--that is, I will be driving, as he has yet to sit behind Gloria's wheel and will be exhausted to boot.

At least I'm not too scheduled today, so I can grab a nap if needed. I'd planned to get the grass mowed this morning, but the humidity is so heavy that I can't stand even the thought of dragging that heavy trimmer around the yard. Things will have to stay as they are: it's not like we're the only house in town with wispy shaggy patchy August grass.

Despite the miserable air, I will go for my walk this morning. I was so rushed yesterday morning--meeting stacked upon meeting--that I didn't manage to get outside, and that's never a good thing. I have a few errands to run today, I need to pack and deal with cat stuff, but otherwise I can be stupid and under-slept without damaging much.

Though the word meeting connotes tedium and wasted time, yesterday's were really useful. We made big progress in shaping next year's version of the conference, and that is a load off my mind. Actually much of what I got done this week is a load off my mind, including my beginning work on the chapbook. Going through my earlier collections, I began to see a particular thread I might follow, and I was unexpectedly pleased by some of those young poems. It's encouraging to note that I wasn't always a wordy self-involved yoinck (though sometimes I definitely was).

Anyway: today. Hot. Humid. A little blurred. But bat-free.