I got a lot accomplished yesterday--finally finishing the week's endless housework, then diving straight into Poetry Lab Notes stuff. Teresa, Jeannie, and I have been preparing a post about our readings and responses to Sei Shonagon, a tenth-century lady-in-waiting in the Japanese imperial court, who wrote a sheaf of gossipy, opinionated observations of court life that have been collected into what is known as The Pillow Book. The post will include short essays by each of us as well poems we wrote using The Pillow Book as a prompt. But as always, it takes some work to pull together the thoughts of three people in a way that makes those reactions coherent on the page. Plus, I'm still learning the Substack platform, so that slows me down.

Anyway, it's a big job that's almost done, and I also made a first stab at drafting a fundraising letter for a new conference scholarship. Today I'll turn my thoughts to prepping for a conference faculty meeting tomorrow. I've got a stack of reading to do, and a couple of poems I need to record for a class I'll be visiting at Bates College this fall. The chapbook project is beginning to weigh on me, and a new editing assignment will be arriving at some point this week.

I'd like to write. Sometimes that possibility seems very far away, but maybe a door will open today . . . a small door I can duck through, a small courtyard with sunlight blinking through the leaves.

Such a long slow rain we had yesterday, a relief for all growing things, but the humidity was thick. Though I decided that trying to mop floors would be stupid, I did get the bathrooms cleaned, and then I was able to turn my attention to desk work: finishing that manuscript job, piecing together a draft of the next Poetry Lab Substack post. In the afternoon I heard from our kid, the one who's been incommunicado in the Canadian forest. He's arrived in Attawapiskat, a Swampy Cree community on the edge of James Bay, and today he and his campers and their canoes will fly south to Timmins and then bus their way back to Temagami. An incredible trip, and I look forward to basking in the glow of his excited voice.

This morning I'll go for a walk and catch up on my floor-cleaning chores, and then I'll return to the desk: more Substack prep, sketching out a fundraising letter for a new conference scholarship. Maybe I'll start sorting through possibilities for that limited-edition chapbook. I need to catch up on my Aurora Leigh reading and keep ferreting a path through my big collected Grimm. I should start thinking about high school teaching plans, and I need to prep for a meeting about the 2027 conference.

So many bits and pieces to juggle, but thus far I'm not feeling too hair-on-fire about work. It helps that I managed to keep August mostly travel-free. Though T and I are driving to Vermont this weekend, I'll otherwise be home until we leave for Chicago in early September.

Now I'm listening to the remains of yesterday's rain slowly drip from the trees; listening to the floorboards creak upstairs as T gets dressed; thinking about patience and impatience, the lonely spaciousness of a quiet room; wondering what will unfold in this unfledged day.

                                             [S]ometimes

’Tis well to be bereft of promis’d good,

That we may lift the soul, and contemplate

With lively joy the joys we cannot share.

--Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison"

I didn't do much of what I imagined I might do yesterday, other than process blueberries and go to the fish market. Instead, after I stuffed the freezer with berries, T and I drove to the Eastern Prom and then strolled along the water, into town and back. Our ostensible goal was the fish market, but mostly we were in it for the tern-watching: such mesmerizing birds, with their sharp triangular flight, sudden needle-drop to the water's surface, then rapid sweep back to sky, a silver fish wriggling.

At the market we bought a handful of scallops for ceviche, a sliver of bluefin for crudo. I baked a small custard cornbread as accompaniment and warmed blueberry cobbler for dessert. A summer feast. 

And now suddenly it is Monday again. Outside the neighborhood is cloaked in fog. Rain is forecast, but so far only a vague drizzle has seeped from the cloud weight.

Yet now, suddenly, a patter of drops, small burst of down-drop, the whisper settling in. Clack of drip on vent hood and air conditioner, steady shiver of water coursing through the broad dry maple leaves.

I've got my weekly housework to deal with today, manuscript job to finish up, stack of emails to answer, Substack post to draft, fundraising letter to write, poems to record, wedding stuff to do . . . so many other this-and-thats. The list for the week is long, but at least I'm not traveling till Friday.

And this rain is a song. I hope it hums all day long and deep into the night.

Every year's harvest is different, depending on the vagaries of what I grow, what I forage, what opportunities fall into my clutches. So far this season I've scored mushrooms--a big chicken-of-the-woods cluster that filled many freezer bags--and blueberries. Of course I picked too many yesterday. But I didn't pick as many as I was tempted to pick, so there's that.

Now the refrigerator is bloated with many pounds of fruit, which I'll need to wash and box up and freeze this morning. The cobbler I baked last night hardly made a dent in the supply. What two people are going to do with so many blueberries is a good question. I daresay I'll be bringing a lot of blueberry desserts to my poetry-group dinners.

Still, as always, I feel self-satisfied, as if I've achieved something marvelous. There's nothing like an August day in a field, air fragrant with hot grass, cicadas a-rattle, marsh hawk wailing. I spent so much of my summer childhood in hayfields, gardens, berry patches; so much of my adult life there too. Sweaty, scratchy, bug-ridden; hands purpled with berry juice; tender skin hay-scratched, thorn-scratched. But then parading home with the loot . . . a loaded hay truck, pans overflowing with fruit. A victory. Flags should fly.

***

Yesterday was all sun and shimmer, but clouds have moved in, with rain forecast to begin tonight and settle in for tomorrow. I'll believe it when I see it: we got almost nothing from the last forecast storm. On the bright side, there's no need to mow grass. Even the weeds are depressed.

Maybe I'll drive out to the fish market today and choose something interesting for dinner. Maybe I'll go for a bike ride. There's an exhibition of modernist musical scores at the University of New England's art museum that I wouldn't mind walking down the street to look at. Yes, I just waxed nostalgic about country life, but here I am in town now, and happy to partake in local delights. Maybe I'm just easy to please.

This morning I am being taken blueberry picking. The car will arrive at 9 and will whisk me off to some field somewhere in Maine, and then I will fill a few containers with berries until lunchtime and then I will fill a few more containers, and then my friends will whisk me home. The expedition is delightfully out of my control, except for the actual picking of berries.

I haven't been on a serious berry-picking run since I left Harmony. It was something I always did with my boys, the three of us wildly filling dishpans and baby bathtubs with blueberries and strawberries. Those two are berry-picking kings: even as little guys they knew how to fill a pail fast, and in our prime our trio could strip a row in minutes. 

I hope to be more desultory today. Without either a chest freezer or ravenous boys, there's no point in gloriously overdoing it. And I'm tired. It's been a long week of PLANS PLANS IDEAS HURRY on about ten different fronts, so I am going to conscientiously try not to relapse into my traditional furious berry-picking persona. It will be hard to behave like a hobby picker, but that's my goal.

Yesterday I stopped in at David Wolfe's printshop to pick up the broadside of my poem, the one I'll be giving to the kids as their wedding gift. It really is beautiful: I love letterpress printing, and I'm so pleased with how it turned out.

But hiring David for this job has had repercussions I didn't expect. He'd earlier mentioned that he'd like to find a way to keep working together, and yesterday he directly suggested that we plan on a  25-page chapbook that he would design, set, and handprint. It could be a poet laureate project of sorts, he said, and I immediately thought, oh, a Maine diary, a new-and-selected . . . what fun! I'm really excited about this idea, though I need another project like I need a hammer to the head.

I'd already spent the morning in a zoom meeting with the Monson staff, all of us bubbling over with too many ideas for stuff we could do with kids, teachers, other organizations . . . This is what I'm supposed to be up to as PL, I think: figuring out ways to make the quiet work visible to people who long for it. But it's overwhelming.

Teresa phoned out of the blue yesterday, to reassure me: I guess I must have seemed a little frayed during our Poetry Lab conversation on Wednesday. Performance isn't new to me: I'm an introvert with a public-facing job, and long before the PL honor I had to attend to my internal struggles with transitions, scheduling, private space. Eventually I'll work out a pattern I can live with, but it's a challenge, no question. On the other hand, the opportunities feel so interesting . . . this chapbook, for instance; maybe a gallery show in Monson; more time spent with teachers and poets and community members. It's the work I love to do.

Well, this morning I'll get back to the manuscript job, and then I'll head north for lunch with the arts commission folks. No doubt more ideas for projects will start bubbling up over the forks and water glasses.

We got all of the storm on the way signs but none of the storm--so disheartening because Maine is in need of steady rain. Not that I envy the Albany area's deluge, but a couple of inches would have been nice.

Well, at least things are damp, which is better than nothing. In the dark morning I glimpse a wet glimmer netting the plants, skeining the cars. A refreshment, though not a quenching.

Today will be another hectic day: a zoom meeting about Monson business, continuing the manuscript job, running out in the afternoon to fetch my poem from the printer, stopping at the drugstore, baking a plum cake for tonight's poetry group, scraping up a writing prompt from somewhere or other, washing sheets . . . probably there's more on the list but I can't remember.

A good thing: Gloria the Mazda! What a fine car she's been, amid this bustle and lurch. I feel fancy every time I get behind the wheel--a deeply unfamiliar sensation, but I admit that I'm enjoying it.

Another good thing: meeting with Teresa and Jeannie yesterday afternoon. It was restful to spend an afternoon with our own winding thoughts . . . talking about H.D.'s Trilogy, about The Pillow Book, about Sappho, about the other books we were reading. To linger at the nexus of making, yet not be planning a class or a performance or any other public conversation. A necessary privacy, but with friends.

For some reason I am writing a lot of fragments today. Why the urge to erode my verbs? Syntax as secret message: Vigor is not the only life. Start in the midst. End without finishing.