Good morning from the chilly Alcott House, a little late because Chuck woke me by climbing on my head at 2 a.m. and I ended up downstairs on the couch trying to recoup my lost hours . . . successfully, as it happened. Once we settled onto the couch, the kitten for some reason became docile and let me fall asleep and stay that way till 6:30. So I am well rested in a non-sequential way, thanks to the no-pressures of a Sunday morning.

It is the last day of August. Outside the sun is awake and shining vigorously, and 50-degree air creeps through the window I left open in the living room last night. My feet are cold, and Chuck's paws are cold on my neck, and if I had any sense I'd close that window. But the crisp freshness is such an uplift after months of limp heat. Cold feet are the price to pay for this clean sharp swirl, with its hint of winter and new apples.

Yesterday turned out to be a kitchen day. I made refrigerator pickles with sliced young cucumbers, a handful of shredded cabbage, and a few slivers of red onion. I processed green beans for the freezer. I marinated a lamb loin in white wine, garlic, lovage, thyme, and oregano. For dinner I seared the lamb, served it with caramelized Vidalia onions and fresh mint; potatoes roasted with sage and olive oil; and a tomato, basil, garlic, and breadcrumb salad. I baked chocolate-chip scones for dessert. Summer at its finest.

Today I'll cut another few herb bouquets for drying. I'll simmer a batch of tomatoes for sauce. I may process kale or chard for the freezer. It's so pleasant to spend morning hours in my pretty kitchen, so pleasant to come in from the garden, bowls piled high with produce.

As I worked yesterday, I thought about my upcoming Poetry Kitchen class--began puzzling out various scenarios for prompts and conversations, trying them out on myself, imagining them in the minds of participants. I got notice of another signup last night, meaning that there are now only two slots left. Clearly changing the date solved my slow registration problem, and I am only too glad to stop beating myself up for focusing on a topic that few people seemed to care about. This would have been my first class failure, and naturally I was prepared to excoriate myself. Fortunately I can now put that project off for another day.

Update: Now there's just ONE space left in the long-poem class. Make it yours?

After discussion, I have changed the dates of my upcoming Poetry Kitchen class on Whitman and the long poem. The original October date was a sticking point for several interested people, so the first weekend is now November 1 and 2; the second remains November 15 and 16. Already I've had a flurry of new sign-ups, and there are currently just three spaces left: grab one while you can.

I'm very happy to be home with Tom for this three-day weekend. Last year at this time I was in New York--my unknowing final sight of Ray, a big Manhattan blow-out meal, a Mets game, my son's engagement. The visit was crowded and expensive and momentous, and next Labor Day will be even more so: we'll be in Chicago with hordes of family and friends for the wedding. So this time around I am ready for the not-momentous: an unhurried holiday at home with my beloved. Our only plan is to take the ferry out to Great Diamond at low tide, probably on Monday, so we can walk across the sandbar to Little Diamond and find a picnic spot in some quiet beach nook.

Yesterday I finished moving firewood into the basement, and now the cellar is swept, the logs are stacked and tidy, the kindling is stowed, and I am basking in the glow of accomplishment. The wood is in: there's so much satisfaction in that small dry sentence. Let the darkness creep forward! Let sleet clatter at the panes! The lamps are lit, and the wood is in.

And we got our first steady rain yesterday, a cool autumn rain, hinting at sweaters and socks and couch blankets and hot tea and tomato sauce simmering in the kitchen. For dinner I made bluefish en papillote, steaming the fillets with black beans, shredded cabbage, and sprigs of thyme; serving them with freshly made salsa and a salad of cucumbers and green beans. I played a My Bloody Valentine album and thought sentimentally of the time my boys and I were car-shopping in Bangor, and we test-drove a car we couldn't afford and drove it around the mall roads while blasting My Bloody Valentine songs on the stereo. Once Ray went to a My Bloody Valentine show and reported that it was "too loud"--a real accomplishment by the band, I'd say, given Ray's lifetime devotion to raucous rock shows.

I got up too early this morning, thanks to pesty Chuck. But that's nothing new. Though I may dream of sleeping late, I hardly ever do. Now he's folded himself into the gap between the back of the couch and my shoulder, wedged in, purring like a pressure cooker, pressing his cheek against mine or patting me with a tiny soft paw. Little Chuck is such a romantic.

On the coffee table: Ruden's Plath study, Lahiri's Whereabouts, Whitman's collected works. An almost-finished book of very hard crossword puzzles. A history of indigenous America, a New Yorker. An empty white cup and saucer. On the mantle, a pewter cup overflowing with sweet peas, a stoneware vase of dahlias and cosmos. Outside: pink-tinged daylight and the clonk of black walnuts dropping from the tree onto my neighbor's junk car.

This is a long note. I seem to have contracted logorrhea overnight. I will release you from my sentences. I hope you get a chance today to enjoy your own.

Little Chuck's debut with the poets went swimmingly. He enjoyed a novelty pen and a notebook with ribbon markers. He climbed into book bags. He submitted happily to doting and cuddling. He claimed his own chair in the circle, then fell asleep in it.

Often I've wondered if, morally, I should have adopted a more difficult-to-place animal: an older cat, a shyer or more anxious one. But it is so gratifying to have a pet who easily dispenses charm and cheer amid a clutter of guests. Like Ruckus before him (though in different ways), Chuck is good at a party. Really, I don't know why I should feel guilty for choosing to adopt a well-adjusted kitten. It's not like this one had an easy start, given his hoarder background. I've also read that shelters sometimes have a hard time placing black cats. So maybe I did him a good turn by taking him in, and now he is doing us a good turn by being such a sweet and sociable pal. Whatever the morals of the case, he lives here now, and we're glad to have him.

So now it's Friday--recycling-truck day, washing-the-sheets day, finishing-the-firewood-chore day. I wrote a couple of drafts last night that I want to inspect this morning. I have friends' poems to read and the book about Plath to pore over. I'll go for a walk. We'll eat bluefish for dinner, and freshly picked green beans, and homemade ice cream, and we'll play cards and listen to the Sox versus the Pirates, and we'll be happy about the long weekend ahead. With luck the sound of rain will lull us to sleep.

I am feeling so grateful this morning for the small and not-so-small gifts. A houseful of friends! A funny kitten! A partner who is so pleased that I have friends, who enjoys the sound of our chatter, who says, "Tell them to come any time." Firewood stacked, fat tomatoes in a bowl, books on the table, a warm arm around me at night and a kitten tucked under my chin. Oh, the world, the world. So terrifying, so beloved.

Fifty degrees on this dark morning, and for the first time in months all of the downstairs windows are shut for reasons of cold rather than heat.

Today is housework day, and another-round-of-firewood day, and, most excitingly, Little Chuck Party day: I've invited my writing group here this evening so that Chuck can enjoy his debut into the social whirl. I'm sure he'll be overjoyed, though to be honest it doesn't take much to overjoy this kitten. He is an enthusiast. Presently he is sitting on my shoulder, purring hard and now and again pressing his cheek lovingly against mine. This cheek-to-cheek stuff is irresistible. It's also impossible to sleep through when he's got breakfast on his mind. Ruckus used to bite me to get me out of bed. Chuck's velvet glove is less decisive but equally effective. First he wedges himself under my chin. Then he pats my face with a soft little paw. Then he rubs his cheek against mine and gets hair in my mouth. The charm-school approach to world domination. So sweet. So annoying.

I've started reading Sarah Ruden's I Am the Arrow: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath in Six Poems. I want to spend time with a friend's new chapbook, and Teresa sent me one of her poem drafts to look at, and I need to come up with a writing prompt for tonight. It will be a busy day for words and wheelbarrow and soap. In the kitchen the toaster pops. Outside, a distant ambulance whoops. Tragedy as background music.  Little Chuck chirps and bats a shoelace.

Given Chuck's ongoing gut issues, I can't lock him out of the basement and away from his litterbox for hours at a time. Nonetheless, I managed to get a sizable amount of firewood into the basement yesterday morning, and then released the lion and let him cavort over the mountain of logs as I stacked. At this speed, I'll need another few days to finish the job, but that's fine. Chuck's delight over the woodpile is worth the extension.

This morning I'll go for a walk with a friend, then return to firewood and my poem draft and my reading. Tonight T and I are going out to the movies--Robert Altman's 1973 noir The Long Goodbye, one of our favorites. Meanwhile, my tomatoes have suddenly started ripening, so I'll make sauce today, maybe freeze a few beans. Clearly it's homestead season--harvest work, firewood work--and I'm lucky to have a block of time to concentrate on the bounty.

Now T is coming down the stairs, and Little Chuck is bouncing after him. The sky whitens; chill air swirls through an open window. No fires needed yet, but the vision of neatly stacked wood in the cellar is satisfying. I look forward to the fragrance of simmering tomatoes. I look forward to a little black cat curled on the hearthrug.

Today I'll finish the Le Carre novel and turn my thoughts to Sarah Ruden's book on Plath. I'll mess around with my draft . . . it's close to done, but a few phrases remain rough or conditional. Is it a good poem? I don't know yet, but for the moment it is alive--shifting, expanding, murmuring.

I know all of northern New England has suffered from drought this summer, but the Maine coast has been particularly stricken. Any rain in the interior never seems to make it to the edge. For instance, though the rest of you had rain yesterday, we did not get a single drop. It's sorrowful to watch the shrubs and trees shrivel into oblivion. Even a passing shower would have been respite. But the rain never comes.

Yesterday I finished Wajsbrot's Nevermore, read a friend's poetry collection, started Le Carre's Agent Running in the Field, and worked hard on a poem draft--exactly the day I was hoping to have. Today I'll do more reading and writing, and I'll also get started on my multistage firewood chore. Part 1 is wheelbarrowing the seasoned logs out of the woodshed and tossing them down the basement hatch. Part 2 is stacking the pile in the basement. Part 3 begins in September, when the delivery truck dumps a new pile of green wood in the driveway, and I wheelbarrow it into the shed where it will season for a year. Tom will help around the edges, after work and on the weekend, but mostly this is my job.

As firewood chores go, it's pretty minor, nothing like the endless forest-to-fire cycle of our life in Harmony. No cutting trees, no hauling them out of the woods, no chainsawing them into stove-length pieces, no splitting by hand or machine, no always being behind schedule, no snow-soaked work gloves and cranky trudging children. Still, even city firewood is a project. There's nothing easy about keeping a wood stove going.

What a lovely weekend! My in-laws are 100 percent fun and sweet and doughty . . . we walked all over an island, walked all over downtown, ate great food, chattered and laughed, became melodramatic over a card game, cosseted Little Chuck, and generally amused ourselves greatly. I so appreciate their good humor, their curiosity, their easygoing restful attitude. It is an honor to be a daughter-in-law in this fine family.

And now it is Monday, and I feel like a person who has actually experienced a restorative weekend. This week I have little on my calendar, other than moving firewood into the basement (which, granted, is a significant project), going for a walk with a friend, and hosting my writing group for Little Chuck Night. So wish me luck with the writing and the reading because they are my primary goals.

I won't start the firewood chore today because we're supposed to maybe possibly who knows receive a dab of rainfall. Last night, from our restaurant window by the docks, we watched the shifting mackerel sky, the wind fluttering the water, and I hope they presaged a true turn in the weather. This drought is terrible.

For now, I am starting the day in my couch corner, with Little Chuck tucked against my shoulder and breathing confidingly into my ear. He, too, enjoyed the weekend company, and now he is full of contentment and breakfast. I've got Cecile Wajbrot's Nevermore to finish today, Sarah Ruden's small book on Plath to begin, Brigit Pegeen Kelly's The Orchard to reread, and a stack of books from yesterday's used-bookstore haunt a-waiting on the shelf (LeCarre, Lahiri, Toibin, Komunyakaa). And today I've got the warming memory of last week's essay acceptance,  I've got a clean and tidy study to work in. And maybe I'll have rain and maybe I'll have good fortune and maybe a few as-yet unknown words will fly up from silence and start humming and bumbling against one another, start murmuring back to me, start telling me a story.

* * *

There's still room in my upcoming Poetry Kitchen class. If you're out there not signing up because you (1) don't understand why anyone might try to experiment with long forms or (2) are struggling with self-confidence about whether or not you should take such a leap or (3) worry that everyone else in the class will already know what they're doing, please reach out and talk to me. As I think I've made clear in a few recent posts, taking the risk of working with long drafts changed me as a poet and as a human being.  I don't say this lightly.