The traffic in this place! The dog is in a hurry to leave, the deer are walking by, juvenile Red-Shouldered Hawks hawking all over the place. (Julie is especially geeked about this.) Fish are jumping, etc. And the latest Oxbow workshop was sensational. So are our neighbors. All this despite a dental implant, but it all goes in the experience book, including remembering our great old friend, Paul Zimmer. One more Oxbow workshop before the summer ends on August 22. Follow this link for the best route for signing up, because the Oxbow website is super confusing.

The Canadian Wildfire Smoke has reached us. Well, it’s all the way into Indiana by now. Ashes falling up north. The Canadians in the paths of these fires will need our help, folks. Material and spiritual help. It’s been a week of managing nature and visiting with amazing students, and planning upcoming shennanigans with poets and musicians, and attending physical therapy to try to keep up with it all. It’s a juggling act, this old age business, and here’s a poem about that, sort of. (Still a couple of seats left in Jack’s last Oxbow workshop of the season on August 22. Follow this link for instructions to sign up.)

It’s deep summer now, and we have gardens bursting, hoses hosing, wonderful students visiting, workshops filling, and a dog with ants in her pants. So many ants. And a fine old favorite hit of a poem on the jukebox. We hope your summer is summering and you can find some joy in the midst of it all.

Pro Tip: Want to get into that August workshop before it shuts down? Use the links on this page to both learn about the August Workshop AND follow the link at the bottom to register, because those web pages a pretty hard to find otherwise.

We have had great visits from friends old and new this week, and are looking forward to the rest of my summer Oxbow writing classes. Goose your writing practice in the nicest way possible, in community, and in a beautiful place. Why not? Check out this link to find the easiest links to sign up. We hope you are staying cool where you are and getting in good visits too! Also, have you noticed the way that soccer reminds us that the whole world is much bigger than just us? We hope you can watch a few matches and Men in Blazers to gather in the joy. We all need it.

We are celebrating our anniversary, waiting for the clouds to clear, serving the dog, and looking forward to workshops at Oxbow. It’s almost July, which boggles our wee brains. We are easily boggled. We hope your summer is kind if it’s summer where you are, even alongside great tragedies and colossal stupidities. Sometimes, persisting is just noticing what the clouds are doing, and noticing your dog, and your coffee. (Yes, Rob, David, and Jonah, it’s a two-sip poem today.)

Beaming with memories of last week’s Oxbow class of writers on a beautiful day, and then Monday’s standing-room-standing-O at the Screenless event at HAAC with the Terminal Buds. We have had a lovely week, and are putting ourselves together again after last night’s flash storm. Strong and short.

There are more Oxbow classes on the horizon, and there is still room in them if you’d like some time to get your writing. mojo puffed up again. Click here for the details.

And then there’s this poem that feels like the right poem on a fresh day after a storm.