spring break, done sprung

It wasn't necessarily warm, but there were some blue skies and no blizzards, which is enough for me.

Also: a little bit of reading, a lot of work-from-the-couch-or-from-the-coffeeshop days, dynamite Greek and Mexican food, long walks in the field with the dog, the Great Guitar Adventure that stretched from St. Paul to Madison, used-book shopping, great sweating glasses of Pimm's and ginger ale, much sleeping in, Coraline, driving in the car and working through a bunch of new music, beer with lemon, new pants, and familiar Wisconsin landscapes.

I know another snow will come, that I can't tuck the ice scrapers and brushes into the trunk just yet. I'm glad to have had a week to refresh and rest and sleep--the luxurious type, where you wake up three times and still find reason to turn back over, or the one that calls you back to bed in the middle of the day, with a belly full of coconut pancakes and hollandaise--but still I feel the pull of spring.

Already my office hours for the next three weeks are booked solid, one conference after another after another, and sheaves of white pages are waiting for red pen. We have six weeks to go: six weeks of the big essays and to work through short stories and then the portfolio blitz of finals week. And after that I have two weeks to sit out back on the deck and plan the summer class. Syllabi on my birthday.

But I can feel the itch starting in the back of my teeth: I want to be writing poems. There is so much I haven't read staring at me from the bookshelves. I want to be sitting in a faded green canvas chair. I want the smell of char wafting up from the grill downstairs. I want to be running with bare arms--good runs, the ones where the miles tick by and you look up to find that you're downtown already, heading into the last hill. I want to be stuffing poems into white envelopes. I want something small and green growing on my windowsill, pushing toward first warm light.