A breeze brought me the most gawky, adorably dorky poem. It landed in my lap all crooked and earnest, and I’ve been smiling ever since I wrote it down.

I want to sit beside it on a pillow and pluck at its sleeve as it reads so I can watch it crane its neck when it’s thinking so I can quit imitating it. I’m definitely enamored of the poem.

And tonight (Monday), dinner was a bowl of the most stunning red and brown new potatoes and chicken thighs all seasoned and baked together. No elaborate sauces, no big gestures, just the simplest food made between poem making. 

What I really want right now is to sit on my porch swing and read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, a book I started almost by accident. 

It plunges right into important terrain, and it does so with openness, tenderness and with such precision I was pulled in from the get-go. 

Like A Death in the Family but first person, epistolary style. It’s truly gorgeous. (I’m only a few pages in, but still.) 

Word Raccoon doesn’t care that my heart is set on soft, she is bossing me around again. This time she says I have to record a video for a poetry submission. Me. On camera. Reading.

I told her no. She said she wrote the poem to be performed, and besides, the ants will be disappointed if I don’t. The ants in the poem. She’s threatening me with insect guilt. I suppose I’ll give it a chance. But I am not thrilled. 

And I’ll keep Nine Gates by Jane Hirshfield close at hand, the craft book whose essay on, of all things, translation, has me entranced.

Word Raccoon, for her part, is still running amok. She made the Amazon delivery guy burst out laughing earlier with an offhand remark. I scolded her, but too late. She thrives on an audience. 

We wrote two more poems last night. One called Lost Amid Translation, after reading that mind-melting essay on translation in Hirshfield’s book. Another called The One With the Interview, but that one is still staggering around the page. 

An update on the town siren: it’s broken, not decommissioned. Sources say it will be fixed. Sometime. I’m choosing to believe it.

And this week, WR and I are setting our writing goals for fall. Among them? Finishing novel number three. 

Pardon me, though. I have a poem I wrote this morning to obsess over.