A batch of quiet showers rolled in yesterday afternoon, soaked my laundry, lingered through the night. Now, in the dark morning, the leaves on the maples look twice as large as they did yesterday, and the grass is inches higher.

It's been a quiet week. I've stayed home alone every day, fidgeting peacefully among my obligations. I've thought a lot about shirts on the line, dinner on the stove. I've been digging in the dirt, polishing manuscripts, watching fat robins wallow in the birdbath. I've been reading without feeling any desperation about writing. I've been writing without feeling any desperation about art. It's been restful.

But tomorrow the flurry begins again. I'll hit the road, heading to Monson to celebrate the gallery show featuring my students' work. I'll drive home Saturday morning, then turn around and go back north on Monday to teach Tuesday's final high school class of the season. It will be tiring. And it will also be the end, at least for a few months.

Outside, two herring gulls sail past, squawking as they go. A train hoots. A car door slams. Sometimes I wonder why I still keep writing these notes each morning because so little changes--day in and out, year in and out. The world fractures, the government implodes, but every single day gulls wheel up from the cove, shouting. The news of earth is damp air and swelling buds. Young Charles admires a spider on the wall. The kitchen clock ticks.

I've been reading without feeling any desperation about writing. I've been writing without feeling any desperation about art. And yet my urge to document doesn't go away. It's just that I don't seem to document anything but the smallest of things.

Daylight. Two birds fly.

Yesterday afternoon, after I'd finished my dose of editing for the day, I changed into my ugly clothes, lugged the wheelbarrow and the spade from the shed, and started digging up the grass strip between sidewalk and street. A couple of years ago I'd planted a small bed of scavenged lilies in the center of the strip. Now that they've begun to multiply, my plan is to slowly spread them into the rest of the strip. I refuse to put any paid-for plants into this sidewalk garden because inevitably, at some point, the city will rip it up during roadwork and I don't want my heart to be broken. But a crowd of free lilies, cushion spurge, and sedum will be just the ticket.

It's been a while since I've done straight-up digging in the way I did every year in the Harmony garden. I don't have the ledge issues in Portland that I fought with up north. If I hadn't turned over the soil fully every year, it would have reverted to stones. But digging is a chore I sort of enjoy. Like carrying firewood, it's tedious but also meditative. I enjoy the strength of my shoulders and arms and back. I enjoy birdsong and wind and the kids who walk by and the hoot of the passing train. And for a gardener, turned-over soil is a visual pleasure, as sweet a sight as a clean notebook page is for a writer.

This evening we've got rain coming in. This afternoon I'm getting a haircut, and this morning I'll be at my desk. But I might find an hour somewhere to do a little more digging. I haven't been very focused on writing poems, but I'm not too concerned. My poet life has been peculiar lately: poetry has been my skin instead of my bloodbeat. That's an awkward metaphor, but maybe you know what I mean: everything has been so outward-facing. Retreating into private life has meant retreating into my homestead tasks: laundry and garden, firewood and mop and shovel. Partly that's just a matter of season. Spring is demanding, even on a postage-stamp homestead like this one. But also I need to figure out how to be two kinds of poet, and that will take time.

After a chilly weekend, Monday was balmy and sweet. I hung sheets and towels on the line, went for a long walk, cleaned the house, opened windows upstairs and down.

It was also Little Chuck's first birthday, and he celebrated by chasing a ladybug and rolling in a sun puddle on the front doormat. How lucky we were when this guy bounced into our lives--this bundle of cheer, this cozy dingbat. Losing Ruckus was such sorrow, but Chuckie has done his very best to remind us that it's good to keep finding someone to love.

On my walk yesterday I snagged a copy of Tessa Hadley's novel Free Love from a roadside library, so that was a score. My desk day was productive too: I returned two finished editing projects to the press, meaning that I am actually whittling down this crazy pile. This time of year is always a peculiar one for me, editing-wise. I am the press's copyeditor for a set of annual literary prizes, and they always arrive to me in a bundle: five books at once. So the work can feel like a carousel: I finish an edit, it goes to the author, it comes back from the author, it goes to the press . . . and five books are spinning on this merry-go-round at once.

Today I'll pluck another ms from its horse, but maybe I'll also have a chance to look at a poem or two, or even go back to my own manuscript and mull over some changes. I will do some weeding in the afternoon (the perpetual maple-seedling eradication continues) but I might also dig out some grass on the sidewalk strip and transplant lilies into it. I've almost finished reading Sebald, have just started the new Hadley. I am full of spring energy, but also not quite sure where it will burst out. All I know is that something will happen.

It is nice to have a few decent, recent photos of myself, and I really appreciate the arts commission photographer, who is good at his job.

You'd think, given that I've been living with a professional photographer for most of my life, I'd have an easy time acquiring acceptable pictures of myself. But in fact we have constantly struggled over headshots and other such paraphernalia. Neither of us is relaxed in pose mode, and my last tolerable portrait is a phone shot I took myself.

**

This morning I'll be back at my desk, sorting through various editing projects before turning my thoughts to housework and groceries. We did not end up canoeing yesterday: the weather was so raw that we realized we'd just be miserable. So instead I worked in the garden: did some planting and weeding, set up more animal fencing, mowed grass, washed down the yard chairs and table after their months in storage. Chuck trotted back and forth between the front door and the back door, keeping track of my progress. He is cozy company, even with a door between us. I also did a little front-yard foraging for dandelion buds, which, like nasturtium buds and new milkweed pods, can be pickled and substituted for capers in recipes.

Foraging for dandelions does scratch the spring itch a little, but I will never stop mourning my fiddlehead patch. Last week, when I was in Wellington, I felt a surge of sorrow when I remembered spring in Harmony. After dinner, at this time of year, I'd leave the boys in the house and go out with my shovel to turn over a few rows in the garden. Without leaves on the trees, the late-day light was blunt and stark. Evening chill was settling in, and often the newly thawed soil was speckled with ice crystals. The muscles of my arms and shoulders recalled their strength. I fought with the big stones that lurched up each year from the ledge below. In the circle of trees around the clearing a pileated woodpecker wailed his archaic song.

I'm 61 years old and I don't want to be arguing with giant stones anymore. I feel lonesome for the me who did.

Somewhere among the sodden maples, a  Carolina wren urges birdie, birdie, birdie. Yesterday's on-and-off rain is on pause, but the sky is still freighted with cloud. T and I are hoping to canoe Brownfield Bog today, but the weather looks unsure of itself. Still, I think we'll take the risk because getting rained on will be better than being consumed by blackflies, which is what will happen if we delay our visit.

Yesterday I had a communication with a friend that I've been mulling over ever since. It was probably the first time I've verbalized something I've been thinking about for quite a while now: the urge that so many people feel to be instructional, by which I mean a constant striving to bring other people into one's own lane. People do this in a lot of different ways: by straight-up traditional bossy talk, but also by posting inspirational memes and/or finger-pointing memes and/or warning memes and/or "joke" memes about bad grammar and the like; by urging others to "pray" for something or other; by, in some way, trying to leverage the power of the scold or the wheedle or the charismatic pronouncement to tell others what to do or how to think.

A few years ago, at a White Sox game, I listened to a man behind me explaining, in great detail, how to fill out a baseball scorecard--that is, how to keep track of every single thing that happens in a game. I glanced back to see who he was talking to, and it turned out that his audience was composed only of his preschool-aged son and his infant daughter. 

That guy was pretty deep into the instructional hallucination. But teachers, politicians, preachers, activists: they're all prone to it. I'm a career teacher myself, so you'd think I'd be right up there with the crowd. But I've never been that interested in making others, for instance, toe the English teacher line. I honestly do not care if you use an apostrophe wrong. I know how to follow the rules, and as a copyeditor I'm hired to impose them. I make deliberate choices about how to use punctuation in my own writing, and I encourage my students to also be deliberate. But I feel no desperation about the value of rules.

The instructional urge goes beyond the minutiae of rules. It's also a longing to bring others into line with one's own morality. I think for many people this is closely linked to panic about the state of the world. They are overflowing with dread, with helplessness. They feel responsible. If they instruct others how to behave, maybe they will assuage their own terrors.

I'm a committed teacher, but increasingly I find such a stance not only exhausting but pointless. As I told my friend, more and more often I feel that the best I can do is to open a space and then set up a trigger for a response to and within that space--to give other people the opportunity to frame their own, perhaps unexpected, clarities. I don't know if this is a cop-out. I don't know if it isn't. What I do know is that I don't like sitting on the judge's bench. And flailing in a maelstrom of dread muddies everything. 

It's forecast to be an off-and-on showery weekend, but T and I are still hoping to take the canoe to Brownfield Bog tomorrow afternoon, and my neighbor and I are still hoping to get over to the plant nursery this afternoon. I ought to mow grass and undertake another round of maple-seedling eradication and prune the wilting hyacinths. I'd like to sow chard seeds and get the snow shovels into the basement and the outdoor chairs into the yard. I'd like to pump up my bike tires and take a practice ride around the neighborhood.

But I also hope it will rain. Despite the gift of a winter snow pack, Maine is still suffering from the aftereffects of last year's drought. We need regular rainfall, and in any case at this time of year I'm always happy to putter outside in drizzle. The scent of wet earth, the privacies of rain, the way the greening world intensifies . . . who wants to miss that?

Yesterday I had long phone conversations with both of my boys, and then in the afternoon a long phone conversation with the writer who was interviewing me for an article in the Haverford alumni magazine. So, with all of that talking, I didn't get much done at my desk--which was fine, as I'd already worked a lot of hours this week. I drove to the fish market and bought soft-shell crabs for dinner. I harvested garlic chives, and went for a walk under the cherry trees, and read Sebald.

What a hallucinatory book The Rings of Saturn is. It's supposedly about going for a long walking tour of the Sussex coast. But the narrator is constantly sidetracked by the thoughts sifting through his mind--the herring fishery, Chinese opium wars, Joseph Conrad--and these long perorations become a dreamlike journey in themselves. In a certain way the novel reminds me of Moby-Dick. The sidebars become the tale, and the tale becomes not a narrative but an unfolding.

Now first light opens over the little northern city by the sea. Cloud presses against roofs, tangles with branches, peers down chimneys. Gulls spin up from the cove. Dog and dog walker stride briskly down a sidewalk, wheel in tandem at the corner, vanish. On the stairs Young Chuck chirrups, hoping to distract me from writing to you. He is the only noisemaker. The songbirds are quiet so far. No tires hiss by, no trains rumble and hoot. The air is a held breath.

Last night's poets laureate jamboree in Freeport was . . . well, I don't know how to describe these things. Amazing to be on stage, to be welcomed as an equal, to receive a standing ovation, alongside the likes of Kate Barnes, Baron Wormser, Betsy Sholl, Wes McNair, Stu Kestenbaum, Julia Bouwsma. Amazing to do this in front of a packed crowd. Amazing to sell a bunch of books and talk to a bunch of people and receive so much confident affection and encouragement.

Yet it was also deeply unreal. I have spent my career working with small cohorts, often in out-of-the-way places, where my task, as I've said a thousand times, is to teach myself out of a job. I hate the cult-of-personality approach to teaching. I've tried so hard to keep my students at the center, to step back so they can step forward into their power. I am the pivot of the universe only when I'm writing alone--and even then I'm as likely as not imagining myself into some other character's mind and body.

I thought I knew what I was getting into when I turned in my application for poet laureate. But somehow I didn't envision the deep strangeness of becoming a public figure. It's not exactly imposter syndrome I'm feeling. I have confidence in myself as a poet, a performer, a teacher. The previous poets laureate are my friends because they are deeply humane, because they care so much about lives, because they are so curious about the world outside themselves. I have a direct and solid bond with them; they are my kind of poets.

More, what I feel, is that somehow, when I'm being feted on stage, I'm not actually doing my best work. My best work is quiet, underhand, almost invisible. My best work is sitting back and laughing when my high school kids create a noir cop drama out of a newspaper article in less than two hours; when the shy boy who almost dropped out of the program because he was afraid of poetry submits, as his final work, a batch of compressed, emotion-filled lyrics that knock everyone's socks off. These kids have become independent makers: they don't need me anymore because they have found themselves.

Despite insomnia, I had a fun day with the kids. It was the last regular day of the program, and they spent the morning creating performances and the afternoon curating their gallery show. I'll see them twice more: next Friday for the opening, and then the following week for a makeup day when we'll be teaming up with the visual artists to do some sort of sculpture project. But the year-long arc I launched them on in September has come to an end.

What do I see? A cohort of kids who love working together, are game for any surprise prompt, will write for long stretches with great concentration, have risked new forms and emotional depths, have learned to look closely at their own drafts and make useful, creative decisions about next steps, feel pride in what they have made but also pride in their ability to make it new. As a teacher, I am a pig in clover. There is nothing more satisfying.

But today I veer into another lane. This morning I've got an eye appointment; then I have to prep for tonight's reading; then I have to experience tonight's reading. I'm so grateful a friend has offered to do the driving as both the pouring rain and the expectation of dilated eyes have been making me nervous.

The venue is apparently sold out, but I'm told there will be a livestream, if you're interested.

For some reason I slept horribly last night, despite the pleasure of peepers outside my window. Now I lie in bed listening to a woodpecker hammer and a grosbeak chirp, lulled by these familiar homeland spring sounds despite my insomniac school-day forebodings.

And at least there's coffee ahead, and a slowish drive up to Monson, and my fine students to greet me. 

And in Portland the cherry trees are in bloom--

What a gorgeous day we had yesterday! Soft air, birdsong, the flowering trees bursting into glory. I got sheets and towels onto the lines, the house cleaned, windows open upstairs and down. I worked at my desk; I baked pita for lamb sandwiches; I took a long a walk. Chuckie raced around the house with a breeze up his nose. Being alive felt like a sort of magic.

This afternoon I'll head north for an overnight in Wellington; then Monson all day tomorrow, the big PL event on Thursday, an interview on Friday . . . A fury of self-consciousness lies ahead, but this morning I'll walk with a friend, this evening I'll hang out with a friend, and a day with my high schoolers will be the perfect way to forget about myself.

I've been reading Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, dipping into Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. Yesterday I plucked a Lahiri story collection out of a free library. Fischer's American Founders is still sitting on the coffee table, waiting for me to embark. Outside the gulls are wailing, and inside I am thinking about books, and upstairs Tom is reminding Chuck not to drink his coffee. Everything overlaps and intersects; each moment is thick with pollen. Chuck sneezes and Sebald's narrator lingers at a lonely train station in Sussex and Tom slices bread and Aurora Leigh says to herself:

Alas, I still see something to be done,
And what I do, falls short of what I see,
Though I waste myself on doing. Long green days,
Worn bare of grass and sunshine--long calm nights,
From which the silken sleeps were fretted out,
Be witness for me, with no amateur's
Irreverent haste and busy idleness
I set myself to art! What then? what's done
What's done, at last?
                                  Behold, at last, a book.

That twingy, weird feeling I had yesterday got worse. I had no idea what was going on and was beginning to panic, until T looked at me and asked, "Are you having a migraine?"

He was exactly right. I have migraines so rarely that my body forgets what they're like, but every one of them has been associated with eye strain. Once T diagnosed my problem, I was able to relax and say, "Oh, fine," because there's nothing to be done with a migraine except lie on the couch with my eyes closed until it runs its course.

None of my migraines repeat themselves exactly. Sometimes I've had brief ocular ones: a half hour of color shards, a 10-minute splitting headache, and then they're over. This one had a bigger buildup (vertigo and shivers), but the headache itself was minor. I mostly experienced it as neurological hallucinations that were both interesting and unpleasant. Yesterday's color palette was deep magenta washing behind my closed eyes like thick rippled paint. At times my nose felt enormous; then the tips of my ears expanded like Spock's; then my teeth were too big for my mouth. I lay on the couch wondering if this might last forever, and for some sufferers it really does. But by early afternoon I was on the downside, and by late afternoon I was completely back to normal.

And now, this morning, I feel almost refreshed, probably from spending so many waking hours with my eyes closed. Fortunately, before the event, T and I had been in the process of problem-solving my eye strain/ergonomic issues. On Saturday, I'd driven to the mall to buy a keyboard and a mouse and then set up my workspace to improve my posture and eye-line. I wear trifocals, and that is much of the problem here: my eyes have to work hard to align themselves with whatever I'm looking at. So strain has been building, and "Voila," said my brain. "You have to lie on the couch and learn your lesson."

***

On another note: Jeannie, Teresa, and I have a new post up on Poetry Lab Notes. It's free for anyone to read, but if you subscribe, all of our new posts will come directly to you.

I'm feeling a little under the weather this morning--kind of shivery and twingy and sour-mouthed; no fever but something is going on. So it may be a quiet day, not that I had anything fancy planned. 

Yesterday I updated my computer operating system, and this morning, as I was beginning to write to you, I watched in horror as Apple's predictive text began taking over my meandering first words. I had a moment of imagining that my relationship with this blog had been destroyed before I figured out I could eliminate the evil tool in settings.

Why not give new users the option to turn on predictive text instead of making them turn it off? Why assume that what writers really want is to not write? Sure, there are plenty of people who are happy to let the computer do the thinking, but why can't they be the ones who have to go into settings and hunt down the button that answers their yearning?

Now daylight begins to arch over the roofs and trees. From my couch corner I crane up at ash tree branches that have suddenly, since yesterday, broken into bud. Spring shouts a new surprise every single hour.

Bet you wouldn't have come up with that sentence, predictive text.

Lenten roses are in their glory now, and species tulips and bloodroot are also lovely. The three ramps I planted without much hope during Covid are spreading beautifully among the bloodroot flowers, and I've even been able to selectively cut a few leaves for meals.

It's been so good to get outside, to relearn my gardening muscles, to idle by the wheelbarrow and watch robins splash in the birdbath. There is no such thing as catching up on garden chores: as soon as I finish, I have to start all over again. But overall the homestead is looking bright and neat and slightly crazy, which is how I like it best.

Yesterday Teresa talked to me about my new manuscript, a conversation that's left me nervous, gloomy, frozen, and overexcited, in about equal proportions. Ugh. Poetry. Why is it so hard? [You know I don't really mean that but, jeez, by this time you'd think I'd have figured something out.]

This poet laureate thing has already been a lesson in humility. I just don't know that much about poems, despite having spent the bulk of my life immersed in them. Who am I to be an ambassador for such a mysterious art . . . an art that is like water running through fingers, like air sifting through a screen.

Well, thank goodness for daffodils, and hot coffee, and Young Charles cheerfully pushing a sliver of kindling under the doormat. The poems settle into the cracks, rise like dust, barely visible but always present. Blink and you miss them. Blink and they're everywhere.

Yesterday I finished an editing project, hung out a big load of laundry, baked a batch of pumpkin bread, and got quite a bit done in the garden: weeded four beds and began on a fifth, trimmed grass, dug dandelions out of the gravel, even did some edging. It was satisfying to make so much progress; also satisfying to draft two decent poem-blurts at my writing group in the evening and then to sleep solidly all night long.

Those sorts of days are tonic. The work of my hands aligns with the work of my head; everything feeds into everything else. The poems exist because I dug dandelions out of the gravel, because I folded Tom's stiff, air-scented shirts, because the kitchen was fragrant with ginger and cinnamon. I don't know how to manufacture that synchronicity. More often than not, time is just chore slapped against chore, days as floating flotsam, obligations tangled together in awkward friction or unrolling in bland tedium. But when everything talks to everything else . . . when the work is the conversation: that is the sunshine.

It's been a windy, chilly week, but this morning the birds are singing lustily, and temperatures are already in the 40s, and I'm hoping it'll be an appealing day for gardening. I've had trouble dredging up enthusiasm for crawling around in cold wet dirt. I've done it, but it's felt like penance.

In other acts of penance: I finished rereading Byatt's The Children's Book yesterday and, as usual, have been cast into gloom by her evocation of the wretched waste of World War I. If I were smart I'd read a cheerful book next, but I just got W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn out of the library, so that will be my fate for the next few days. Still, I'm looking forward to it. Somehow I've never read Sebald before, though I've known about him forever.

And Tom's home, so that's a bright spot, even though he'll be trudging off to work shortly. With luck I'll finish an editing project this morning and then be able to idle with my own stuff for a few hours. I have to steal time when I can because another burst of obligation lies on the horizon. On Saturday I need to make an appearance at the Plunkett Poetry Festival in Augusta. On Tuesday I head north so I can teach my high schoolers on Wednesday. On Thursday I'll take part in a big poet laureate extravaganza in Freeport. On Friday I have a phone interview with a writer for the Haverford alumni magazine. I'm not sure how Haverford found out about the PL thing, but such mysteries are the story of my life lately.

Probably there's other stuff on the calendar, too, but for now it's a blur. Though, by the way, I forget if I mentioned that there's just one spot left in the next Poetry Kitchen class. Grab it fast if you've been thinking about it because I probably won't be offering another PK session until the fall.

My neighbor and I went into town yesterday around dinner time--first, to an open house at Mechanics Hall, a nineteenth-century workingman's lyceum that is now a library and performance space. I'd long been curious about the library, which was not exactly what I'd been imagining. I'd pictured dark volumes of 1880s blacksmithing and carriage-building tomes, and the collection is mostly contemporary. But there are some older books, and also some collections of 1950s-era Popular Mechanics and other such magazines. The articles are dull, but the ads are great. For instance, if you're looking to earn a few extra bucks, have you considered this possibility?

Afterward we went out for hotpot, which was also fun, and then I got a newsy email from Tom and talked on the phone to our kid, who is excited about a film project he's cogitating about with his brother. Nothing makes me happier than happy sons, especially when they're excited about making something together; and nothing makes Chuck happier than watching me take off my outside shoes and put on my pajamas, so he and I climbed into bed with light hearts.

This morning I've got to get my car to the garage for an oil change. And then I'll be back at my desk, and maybe I'll get outside eventually to do another batch of weeding. T will be home this afternoon, so I need to think of something nice to make for dinner. I've had a pleasant few days on my own, and I know he's had a good time too, but I suspect we'll both be glad to get back to our usual friendly ways.

I thought yesterday was going to be sunny, and sometimes it was, except when it was sleeting and hailing. The laundry did manage to dry on the lines, mostly thanks to the wind, but it wasn't a soft day in any way. Up in the Saint John Valley, on the Canadian border, Tom tells me it's raw and wet, a mix of snow and rain, and he wishes he hadn't forgotten his hat. But he sounds happy, says he's shooting a ton of film and is looking forward to another good day.

Meanwhile, Chucky is thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to be home and can hardly bear to let me out of his sight. I'm glad to have him back too. This house is lonesome without a little guy racketing around in it. Now I am drinking my coffee and he is peering out at the dim morning. It's cold, only 23 degrees outside, and the furnace is roaring at full blast. Spring seems to have shriveled back into winter. Yet a robin is trilling and chortling with enthusiasm, just as if temperatures were sweet.

This morning I'll go for a walk with a friend before crawling back into the editing mines. I don't know if I'll get out into the garden: the weather isn't deal for scooting around on my knees, which is what I mostly need to do at the moment. Dandelions in the gravel, maple seedlings everywhere: spring weeding is a chore.

But I've had two nights of solid sleep, and I'm doing a lot of reading. My little cat is chirping, and the mantlepiece is thick with daffodils. The house is clean, and my thoughts are rivers. Poems wander in and out the doors. 

I climbed into my own bed at 8 p.m. and stayed there until 6 a.m. waking only once, briefly, around 3 a.m., to grab an extra blanket because I was cold. I've been caught in an insomnia cycle for a week now, so this was a welcome, welcome change. It won't happen again because Chuck is coming home from the kennel this afternoon. But it sure was fabulous.

Now here I sit, on a Monday morning, watching bright sunlight cast tree shadows across the houses and driveways. I am not rushing around to do chores because I cleaned house and washed clothes yesterday afternoon when I returned. I will work at my desk this morning but for now I am resting in the Edenic moment: no other tasks need to be done; no other body needs my care.

As expected, the drive home from the island was rainy and miserable. But a stormy day was just what the garden needed: the seeds I planted last weekend have sprouted, the grass is green, green, green, and today's sunshine will be a balm. I'll go for a walk. Maybe I'll hang sheets on the line. I might drag the reel mower out of the shed. At my desk I'll gaze at forsythia and daffodils.

Concord Street Hymn

 

Elaine is standing on her stoop with her doddering

chow Teddy, and I am trying to decide if I

can pretend I don’t see her. Elaine has a shout 

like a blue jay’s and she specializes

in the unanswerable. “Dawn!” she hollers now, “I can’t

recognize you if you’re not wearing a hat!”

Meekly I halt and admire her daffodils.

“I dug them up by mistake,” she barks.

“Now I don’t have a-one.”

 

Next door, at the LBRSTMN’s ranch house,

there is no shouting. The license plate on his pickup

is the only information available. Otherwise: shades

drawn tight, a note to the mailman taped to the door,

a needle on the front sidewalk, and daffodils

bobbing along the foundation:

yes, there will be

 

daffodils in every stanza of this poem

because it is spring in Maine, and all people

except for teenagers are still wearing

their winter coats, and the maples

in the backyards are bare-armed wrestlers,

and the gutters are scarred with sand

and cigarette butts, and the breeze

 

kicking up from the ocean makes us

lift our muzzles like hounds.

O wind and salt!

Daffodils tremble in the yard

of the pro bono lawyer, tremble

among the faded plastic shovels of her children.

A woodpecker shouts among the bald maples

 

and Elaine maligns me: “I don’t know why you’re

outside so much. You don’t even have a dog.”

She makes me feel like dirt but that’s not

so bad. A swirl of sea-gale buffets the chimneys, 

twigs clatter onto Subarus. Daffodils, yellow as eyes,

breast the wind. Earth is thawing, they

shout, they shout, and I, on this half-

green bank, unfurl.

[from Accidental Hymn (Deerbrook Editions, 2022)]

The alarm went off at 4 a.m., and 20 minutes later T was heading north.

Meanwhile, here I sit, a new fire of cedar logs crackling, coffee steaming in a cup that reads Ernie. Eventually I'll shower, eat, pack, tidy. At 7:45 I'll walk up to W's house to do the Sunday crossword with her and her sister. And then, before 9, I'll be on the road, back in Portland by noon, reconfiguring myself into home life. I hope I won't be driving through rain, but probably I will.

Outside it is still fully dark and the peepers are king. T heard a barred owl as he was packing his truck, and with luck it will return to haunt me. Yesterday I wrote a new poem draft, so I'm already being haunted. But I always have room for more.

It will be odd but not bad to be solitary for a few days. I do wish I could get Chuck out of the kennel this afternoon, but they're not open for transactions on Sundays so he and I must wait till tomorrow for our reunion. As always, I've got plenty to keep myself busy--house, garden, desk.

Under normal circumstances I'd be heading to Monson this week, but school vacation has disrupted the schedule. So I'll have a respite--from travel, at least. I do have a memoir, a story collection, and two poem collections to copyedit. I have a lot of laundry to wash, and a lot of dandelions to dig out of the gravel walkway. Plenty of windows to gaze through. Plenty of stairs to climb.

My house is a badger’s tunnel

 

twisting and turning among roots and ledge.

It is an empty osprey’s nest, it rattles in a high gale.

 

I wake in a heap of feathers and bone.

Hope puddles under the floor.

 

The days ebb. I sweep blizzards and sand

as neighbors prowl under moonlight, hunting for breakfast.

 

In the mornings some of us are missing,

never to be seen again.

 

My house is a cavern of echoes.

It is as vast as despair, as shiny as coins.

 

I cannot find a door, yet windows are everywhere.

Each one hawks a different tale—

 

sing this tree, eat that sky.

But when I pull the curtains, darkness slides out like an eel.

 

Then I hear, very faintly,

the slow, slow drip of my life.

[from Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, 2024)]

 

We hiked Great Head yesterday--a spit of granite jutting out alongside Sand Beach, with spectacular views of the open Atlantic as well as the Beehive and other famous climbs along the Ocean Drive region of Acadia. Great Head is not known as a highly challenging hike, but post-rain it did involve a lot of scrambling over and among wet rocks, so we had to watch our footing.

The day began with fog but brightened into streaky blue skies. Long twists of cloud roped across the horizon, and Frenchman's Bay gleamed like a vast glazed bowl. In the forest a kinglet sang. A pair of black-backed gulls skated the breeze. In the distance we could just glimpse squatty, square Egg Rock Light clinging whitely to its stony isle.

We often hike on the quieter side of the island, avoiding the Bar Harbor lobe and the Park Loop Road and the other famous attractions of Acadia. The quiet trails are closer to the cottage and generally less peopled. But the drama of the Ocean Drive views is real. And on an April school day during mud season, this side of Acadia was nearly as peaceful as the other.

Today will be a work day. We may get out for a small neighborhood walk, but first we'll help load the car for the dump, take down some branches, shore up a deer fence. T will replace an old outlet in the cottage. Last night we went out to movie night at the Bass Harbor Library--a screening of Hitchcock's The Thirty-Nine Steps, always a favorite, where I was introduced to the sparse crowd as the next poet laureate. I am beginning to think I should take etiquette lessons in order to learn how to deal with my new incarnation as a minor local celebrity. I still feel like a twelve-year-old peeking out from behind a door.