The cat and I both slept in till 6:15, a major feat for us as a team. So I woke in the magnificent bed with sunlight pouring through the east window, the window itself open, the blind gently clacking in a small wind, a cardinal's song lilting, a train rumbling past.

I've been working hard to make this a day that I spend mostly outside. I managed to catch up with desk and housework, so I'll be going seedling shopping this morning and I'll put the plants in the ground in the afternoon. I need to mow and trim and weed and deadhead tulips and hyacinths. I'll hang out the laundry and, if the temperature lets me, I'll eat lunch in the sunshine. What with all of the weekday street construction, spending a bright quiet Saturday in the yard feels urgent.

By the way: I am cordially inviting you to the book launch for Accidental Hymn, on Wednesday, May 25, 7 p.m. ET, on Zoom. The invitation link is above, in the page tabs, and also includes a link to ordering the book. I was trying to figure out the easiest way to make those sources available without constantly reprinting them, and I hope this method works.

 Good morning!

At long last my next collection, Accidental Hymn, is available for ordering! Shortly I'll also be able to share with you a zoom invitation to the book launch, on Wednesday, May 25, 7 p.m. ET. I'll be reading from the book and will also be in conversation with Teresa Carson about it.

Next week, I'll be part of a different sort of event--Found in the Archives: Stories of Buried Treasure, sponsored by the University of New England. I'll be talking about my diary-poem manuscript, which came into being thanks to a diary archived at UNE's Maine Women Writers Collection: Thursday, May 12, 6 p.m. ET. If you're interested in the notion of creative research, you might want to check it out.

And thus, today, I'll be futzing over my talk, worrying about marketing the book, getting my eyes dilated at the optometrist's, and engaging in other such unnatural activities . . . though thankfully yesterday I did transform a poem blurt into a first draft, and I did spend the evening writing with friends, and I did go for a bike ride and work in the garden.

Road construction has taken a small hiatus in order for the water guys to hook up our lines to the alternate source. So it's even been sort of quiet outside. I'm dreading next week. "Ledge," one water guy told me. "There could be ledge." An ominous prediction.

Outside, in the near dark, a cardinal is singing and singing. He knows a good day is coming . . . sun after rain, warmth after chill. I am so looking forward to it. 

This has been a cold spring. It's May, but the temperature has rarely gotten out of the low 50s. The garden is beautiful but refrigerated. I'm not complaining: we've had plenty of rain, and not much frost. But there's been no lingering in chairs or hammock, no meals by the fire pit. 

Today, though, we're supposed to see 65, and I am eager for that soft air. Everything is soaking wet, so I probably won't do much gardening. And I can't forget that the place will be overrun with street construction. Still, windows open; a hour in a garden chair with a book . . .

Mostly, though, I'll be at my desk: editing, working on that lecture. I think I'll go out to my writing salon tonight. I think I'll go for a bike ride this morning. My body is eager for action, and my mind feels flibberty, in that poem-need way. Funny how those things so often go together.

We're supposed to have rain all day, which is just fine with me. Everything is so dusty from the roadwork, and I look forward to watching the new leaves shift and shine though my wet windowpanes.

I'll be editing, and working on a syllabus for Sunday's class, and starting to write a lecture for the event I'm doing next week for the Maine Women Writers Center. I need to grocery-shop and wash sheets. I'd like to transcribe some pre-poems out of my notebook. I ought to do some submissions.

Yesterday I went for a beautiful, early-morning bike ride through the neighborhood and cemetery, but I won't do that today as my rained-on glasses would immediately blind me. Still, I might walk: a spring drenching is hard to resist, especially with a steaming cup of tea and a wood fire to follow.

For some reason my thoughts are a bit scattered this morning. I woke up hard from a solid sleep, so maybe that's the reason. But now that I'm awake, I'm able to be glad to have finished my weekly housework, to have made my way through the first class of a new session, to be home without prospect of travel any time soon. I'm ready to settle down, ready for a rainy day and books and a roast chicken in the oven. 

By the way: yesterday afternoon I made the best rhubarb pie I have ever baked. Delicious, a beautiful slicer, not one bit soggy. My friend Weslea loaded me down with stalks from her seaside plants, and my own new rhubarb plant added a few of its own to the mix, and, gosh, I wish you'd been here to taste the result.

 . . . and the road construction has started again. Yesterday all of the irrigation pipes reappeared, young men were hoicking out chunks of pavement, dust was flying, noise noise noise. They say another two weeks of this while they replace the waterlines they were supposed to replace last fall when they redid the sewer connections. In short: planting season is going to be on the miserable side.

But oh well. Better than failing waterlines.

I'll be teaching on Tuesday evenings for the next six weeks: another chapbook class, but this one massaged into a different format for the needs of this particular crew. So today I need to figure out my before-n-after dinner prep: something ready to put on the table after I finish zooming, which I can prepare completely before I start zooming. I haven't come up with any ideas yet, but I'll get there.

Otherwise: finishing housework, finishing laundry, editing, prepping for a Sunday-afternoon class. We got some welcome rain last night, so later this morning I'll wander outside and see how the plants are doing. I'd like to go for a bike ride today. I'd like to make an apple-rhubarb pie. I would not like to endure road construction, but that is also what I'll be doing.

We got home late afternoon, much to the cat's joy and loud complaint. The flower gardens look beautiful: tulips everywhere, the quince beginning to bloom, carpets of violets. Today I will give everything a good watering, in between catching up with desk obligations and getting my hair cut and doing my exercise class and addressing the laundry pile and the housework. Tomorrow evening my next chapbook class begins: six Tuesday evenings covering what I usually distribute over three Sunday afternoons. So the classes will have familiar content but a new rhythm, and I need to spend time today figuring that out.

Our visit to Mount Desert Island was a respite, a real delight, and we are already planning a return in late October, when the cottage is uninhabited again. It's a dear place, much loved for many years, but our move to Portland has made it a bit harder to reach. Still, we can figure out how to get back more often. It seems important.

The roots we put down: I go up north to my friends' house in Wellington and I am embraced by the pines and firs of the homeland, though I am not on land that ever belonged to me. I go downeast to West Tremont and I step into a shabby fairy-tale volume: a little cottage by the sea, with its familiar windows and mugs and plates and crooked stairs, its wandering fields of forsythia and raspberries. I go west to Franconia, and there Robert Frost's musty little farmhouse waits, with its front porch staring into the mountains, its stars as bright as cities. None of these place are mine, but they all live in me.

These are views of the trail and shore at Indian Point, a Nature Conservancy property that we hiked into yesterday afternoon. Somehow we managed not to step onto any Acadia trails while we were here . . . and that is hard to do on this island.

Usually, on our visits, we are gung-ho about climbing a mountain, seeing a view. But for some reason both of us--not at all sick, not notably exhausted--have been almost convalescent in our lack of get-up-and-go. Yes, we walked several miles, and I did an exercise class with my friend, and today we are going to help her with yard work. But we didn't "accomplish a peak"; we didn't even want to. We wanted to be mild, and take giant naps, and potter around at the edge of the sea.

Right now I am sitting in a comfortable shabby chair and drinking coffee and looking into the sunshine over Goose Cove. The tide is out, and the mudflats are littered with seaweed and boulders. In the distance is Swan's Island. The blue water is speckled with gulls. The blue sky is streaked lightly with white. This has been a sweet and elegiac visit to a place we've known for decades, a history-cavern of children and dog and long friendship, always a respite and a peace in our lives. A place that has never belonged to us, yet has dearly belonged to us.