The rain poured all night, and already the cat has been in and out through the back door three times this morning, shocked by the wet, compelled by the scintillating thaw. It is hard to imagine that winter will return this year, though I could easily be wrong. Winter has a way of digging in its claws. But everywhere in Portland tree buds are swelling and flower spikes are greening and patches of lank dead grass are beginning to shimmer.

Today's big project is to bake a lemon layer cake for tonight's poetic baby shower. Probably I'll also work on some conference planning, and I need to clean the upstairs rooms, and I'll keep chipping away at revisions and reading contest entries. Though, as always, I dreaded asking, I did quickly manage to coax two friends into writing cover blurbs for the new collection--a giant relief. Nothing makes me feel more like a wallflower at a party than having to creep onto the dance floor and ask somebody to write a blurb for my book. It's awful . . . though afterward, when the invited ones say yes, I am always jubilant, as if I've managed to evade the Minotaur in his own maze.

Anyway, that's over now, and I can concentrate on the manageable: fixing typos, correcting acknowledgments, compiling cover copy. All of my experience as a copyeditor does come in handy during the production process. I'm fussy about page design, fonts, Chicago Manual of Style recommendations, etc., but I'm also able to solve problems, and avoid them, and I know how to professionally proofread, how to mark corrections clearly, how to respond to a manuscript quickly and efficiently. And there's a satisfaction in getting to use these skills on my own books, not just in service of other people's manuscripts.

* * *

The rain is still thumping and rattling against the windows. The furnace is humming. The cat is drying off on a chair. 

I went on two long walks yesterday--one alone before breakfast, one with a friend before dinner. It is hard to stay inside in the spring. I am like the cat . . . I can't resist the scent of wind.

Here's a poem from the new collection, about that very thing--

* * *

Air

Dawn Potter

 

I could see nothing but air on air on

            all sides, nothing but warm impossible

space and the whole of the beast I was on:

That floats and swims and wheels and descends

            slowly as departure, a series of

            departures, into the breath of the rising

Wind.

 

—Dante, The Inferno

 

A sigh,

exasperation or sorrow. A breath, long

and slow; a wheeze, harsh as bricks.

The cough, below stairs, of a woman

 

who will die in a year; wail

of a newborn, who will die in ten.

A breeze over the sea, waves

as high as museums, waves as wide

 

as cornfields, waves as deep as the tale

Homer sang one night, while a goat

bled out in the courtyard and slave women

whispered in the olive grove.

 

A wind, whining across the plains, whining

against the empty, glittering tracks, against the first

railroad cars, against the raw new towns,

against the cities of industry, against the interstate

 

highway, against the steel walls of semi-trailers.

Battering against the penitentiaries and the churches:

a gale, scented with blood, with jasmine, with rot,

with mornings, with butter and bacon

 

and the snow-tracks of sparrows. A gust,

sifting the alleys of your ancient fortress, fingering

your stripped meadows, your pine forests, your empty sky.

Snare it, pin it to your breast, beg it to tear you away.

[from Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]

Yesterday was one of those days, common enough after I've been on a long streak of concentration, when I couldn't get much done. I did work on some class planning, and I did read contest poems, and I did vote, and I did do some house tasks, but I also spun in circles and drooped beside windows and lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling. I couldn't quite write; I couldn't quite drill into my own mind; but I also couldn't quite relax into pure play.

None of this is surprising, as I've been editing hard for many weeks. I've been teaching and planning and trying to sell classes. I've had a cancer scare. I've been worked up about this publication decision. Then I suddenly had a lighter day, and mostly what I did was wander around the house.

Maybe this morning I'll have better luck. I'd like to mess with revisions for a few hours. I'll be talking to Teresa in the afternoon about the poems of George Herbert, so that will be soothing. I need to make sorbet for a baby shower tomorrow. I'm determined to walk, whether or not it's raining. The next editing project will arrive one of these days, and next week I'll be on the road for two nights, teaching up north in a high school and then at Monson. I'd like to figure out how to be productive during this week's small hiatus. But yesterday my brain just said no.

 I'm happy to announce that Deerbrook Editions will publish Calendar, my sixth poetry collection, in fall 2024. Deerbrook was my first publisher, releasing Boy Land in 2004, so this will mark my twenty-year anniversary with Jeff Haste and his beautiful press. Deerbrook hasn't been my only publisher, but it's been my steadiest and most constant. It is rare to find publishers who are loyal to their authors, but Jeff certainly is. When he wrote to me over the weekend, asking about my collection, I realized how much I hate, hate, hate the terrible merry-go-round of submissions and rejections. Here is a man who makes gorgeous books, who cares about my work, who pays royalties. As soon as I said yes to him, a thousand-pound weight slipped from my shoulders. I'm full of gratitude. The manuscript is finished and the book will come out. I can focus my editorial attention on preparing it for press. And I can turn my creative attention to making new poems.

I'm fifty-nine years old, and I will never be a famous poet. I don't have an MFA network, I don't have any PR, I can't afford to apply for prizes, and I don't have the will to rush around the country making a name for myself. Still, what I do have is more than I ever thought I would possess when I was young and yearning: a list of published books, the friendship of top-notch writers who matter to me personally, and a teaching reputation. That's not a bad outcome for someone as po-biz wary as myself. Of course, humans are never satisfied, and I am always beating myself up for not being someone else. Ergo, this recent urge to submit my manuscript to more famous presses. As if, by magic, I'll suddenly spring out of the world I actually live in.

My poems are as good as the poems of more famous people. I work as hard. I have all of the fire and ambition. But my canvas is small. It is this little house on this little street. It is my classroom beside a lake in the Maine woods. A miniature life of letters. But it is still a life.

I slept till 5:30--very unusual for a Monday, but T has an appointment this morning before work and I reaped the benefits of not having to leap up before the crack of day.

The temperature is mild--above freezing with a whiff of melt in the air. Yesterday we basked in the 50s, and I spent a couple of hours in the yard, doing first-day-of-spring jobs: cleaning out garden boxes, setting up the cold frame, planting spinach; then picking up sticks, pruning roses, and tearing out the big broken rose trellis that blew over in one of our winter hurricanes. I checked spring growth. Much of the kale had wintered over, so I pruned back the dead leaves. I admired the garlic shoots and the green onions and the first snowdrop. Daffodils and hyacinths are up, and the scylla is starting to poke through. A few tulip leaves have appeared. Buds are swelling on the trees, and cardinals are romancing in the hedges.

It felt wonderful to be out and about on my little homestead. I'm longing to rake out garden beds and pin shirts to the line. I always get drunk on spring air. And then I always do something foolish, like plant too early or hang out sheets in the snow. Apparently I will never learn.

For the moment, I'm pleased to have a slow Monday-morning start, but soon I'll have to fork myself off this couch and into my workday. I've got editing to finish, class planning to start, stacks of contest books to read. I've got laundry to fold, laundry to hang on the cellar lines, wood boxes to fill, errands to run, meals to plan, poems to revise. Last night we ate lamb patties packed with garlic and onions and a fistful of my own dried herbs. We ate wild rice and roasted cabbage and marinated tomatoes and fresh raspberry sorbet. Tonight, who knows? Anything could happen . . . fish, lentils, omelets . . .  

I'm fizzy about spring. I'm fizzy about poems. I'm fizzy about the thought of placing my manuscript with a publisher and about not having to be on the road this week. I am like a cardinal in a hedge, hopping among twigs, singing my tunes, extolling the perfections of nests and eggs. Of course, this is before the cat shows up.

The drizzle started up yesterday afternoon, while we were strolling down Washington Avenue from the oyster shop to the poutine shop, and by the time we got home it had settled into a steady, leak-into-the-basement kind of downpour. In the back room Tom watched Japanese noir. In the living room I watched the wood fire and worked on a poem. And then eventually we reconvened to eat cheese and play Wingspan--a fine and lazy ending to a generally lazy day. All evening the rain ticked against the windows; all night long it drummed the roof. I woke and slept and woke and slept to the sound of rain, and I dreamed of being at my kitchen table in Harmony.

Though much of yesterday was play, I did read poetry collections, and I'll work through another batch of contest books today. For now, though, I am basking in the young warmth rising from the registers. Black coffee steams in a white cup. A jar of daffodils suns on the kitchen counter. Tom is burrowed into the deep Sunday-morning repose of the full-time construction worker, and a wet cat noisily crunches chow.

Outside, in the darkness, the fragrance of spring rises from the sodden soil. When I open the back door, a small wind wraps around me like a watery veil. What's new, what's new? whispers the ash tree, and a possum scuttles into the shadow of the neighbor's garage.

The salt Atlantic laps at the docks of this small city teetering at the nation's northeastern edge. Up the hill, a little plain-faced house squats on its skimpy plot beneath the brittle bare arms of towering maples. Inside the house, two aging lovers and their difficult cat; inside, books and pantry shelves and folded cotton sheets. It is the most unspectacular of happy endings. It is one brief tale in the story of a world that is collapsing into ashes.

Yesterday was a flurry of laundry, bathrooms, floor washing, groceries; plus writing and sending out a newsletter, responding to emails about said newsletter, posting class info on social media, solving invoice issues, and other such unnatural chores; plus squeezing in some revision time; plus taking a long chattery afternoon walk with friends; plus diving into a bunch of other piddly tasks I've forgotten to remember. It was a day crammed with event, and I was glad to sit down to a beer and a big bowl of shrimp and asparagus linguine at the end of it . . . even if that meant I had to make the linguine.

But now it's Saturday, and I slept in till after 6, and the heavy housework's done, and I don't have anywhere I need to go, and Tom's not sick anymore, and I am looking forward to an unstructured and undemanding weekend. I do have to read contest entries, and I do want to haul my cold frame out of the shed and set it up in one of the garden boxes. But otherwise the weekend winds can waft me where-e'er they list. I might toddle down to the fish market. I might convince T to go out for oysters and poutine. I might take a nap by the fire. Anything could happen.

Yesterday brought me another bit of good cheer: a friendly and unprompted invitation regarding my as-yet-unplaced manuscript Calendars, which has been floating for several months in the contest aether. So today I need to make some decisions, though I'm pretty sure I know what I'm going to do. A bird in the hand, as they say.

People are signing up for my classes. A publisher reaches out to ask for my collection. Friends text me and say, Let's take a walk! Things are not going so badly in my neck of the woods.

Yesterday I shipped my big editing project to the author; and though I still have a few bits and pieces to finish up on it, I'm going to take today off from editing and catch up on some planning, poetry, and house things. It's Friday, it's thirteen degrees, it's March, and I am caught up in a swirl of obligation . . . teaching, editing, contest judging, housework--and spring is looming, with all of its pleasures and chores. My little city garden makes so many demands. How did I ever manage to raise children and manage a 40-acre forest homestead--goats, pigs, chickens, extreme firewood, a giant garden, canning, cheesemaking--plus edit and write and teach? I must have been nuts. Or young.

Outside, a lopsided moon beams over the little northern city by the sea. Inside, the furnace grumbles, lamplight casts circles of shine and shadow. The tidy shabby chairs glance modestly toward the fireplace. The books on the table cough lightly to catch my attention. In a stone jar, the rosy hyacinths foretell their own death.

Today will be filled with unremarkable things--clean sheets and clean floors, five words on a page, a cold wind.

I send my messages ahead of me.

You read them, they speak to you

in siren tongues, ears of flame

spring from your heads to take them.

--Denise Levertov, from "Poet and Person