We were at AWP Minneapolis last week/end. When we left Georgia, the azaleas were almost done blooming. When we landed in Minnesota, the fields were brown and starting to thaw. It snowed briefly on Friday morning and was sunny and warm enough to eat a picnic outside the convention center on Saturday. Meanwhile, back home, the season had turned from spring to summer. In the four days we were gone, the trees unfurled into full green.
Driving home from the airport Sunday afternoon, I marveled at the lushness, the closeness of all the foliage. MSP had been a lovely buzz of all the things--reunions with grad school advisors and peers, the release of my prose chapbook Rook & The M.E., breakfasts and beers with former colleagues, closing down the conference on Saturday night reading at a bar--and it was good to see people, good to come back to something that felt equally full.
I found out the week before AWP that I am the new assistant professor of creative writing at this school of ours. This coast--where we've been for the last four years--will be our home for a few more years, it seems. The droop of Spanish moss, the little ferns that wave from the limbs of the oaks.
This is an adopted landscape, but I'm glad to know it.
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