“April has begun like itself.” 
                             The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1 April 1854, p.m.

      The last three days have been such typical spring weather. Snow Sunday and Monday, first sleety, then big fat flakes. On Monday morning, I waked to find it covering the ground, rather a shock, but it was melted by noon. Now this morning (10:18 a.m. as I write this) the sun is streaming, and I can step outside without a coat. But the rains are due by afternoon, and I will probably be out in a soaking rain tonight for my Night Hike appearance as “The Moon.”
      I realize that today is April Fool’s Day, a tradition I absolutely despise. I pretty much despise practical jokes in general, and April 1st seems carte blanche for cruelty masquerading as “fun.” Or, as Thoreau said on this week in 1853, “Nothing is more saddening than an ineffectual and proud intercourse with those of whom we expect sympathy and encouragement.” I was raised in a family where we didn’t pull such stunts. I remember once, when I was very young, learning the tradition at school in first or second grade, not quite understanding, and trying one of the stunts on Grandma Young on April 2nd. “April Fool’s is past,” quoth she, “You’re the biggest fool to last.” And that was the end of my career as one who trafficked in April 1st jokes on any day of the year.
      Fortunately, April is National Poetry Month, and so today gives me that to celebrate instead. Wednesday night, I will be in the company of about 15 poets giving a reading in Findlay.
      I’ve been thinking a lot about pussy willows lately, how much fewer and less I have seen of them than when I was a child—is that them or me?  We had a tree in our back yard, and we lived across the street from a lot of undeveloped pond, Sippo Lake, and land. (It’s now a housing development and a county park that has done a lot to maintain the pond.) I really hadn’t seen real pussy willows for years until two weeks ago when I had to go to Sam’s Club with my sister. (I normally would not be caught dead in a Sam’s Club.) There, they were selling skimpy little branches with not many fluffy nubs on a branch, but I bought them anyhow. When I cut them back to just the tips, they didn’t seem quite as skimpy, though they are, and they are in the kitchen, next to a pot of yellow mums, which are brighter but don’t give me as much hope as those skinny pussy willows. 
      Saturday, Paul and I were looking for signs of buds anywhere, only saw them on one tree along the path to the EEC. Then walking Sunday in the cold, I actually found a pussy willow tree near the “Indigo Lake” train stop/parking site. It was a bit skimpy, too, but felt like a nice find. Have pussy willows gotten worn down environmentally in the past 40 years, or are my childhood memories overblown? I remember long stems of fat, fluffy gray nubs, so thick you could run your fingers along a stem and never touch branch. Both the ones I purchased and the ones I saw in the field are not like that. 
 
 

Wednesday, 2 April 2003, a.m.

“A remarkably warm day for the season: too warm while surveying without my greatcoat; almost like May heat.” 
                                       –The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, March 17, 1854

      The weather is just glorious, amazing. Last night, I was able to perform my Diana, Moon incarnation act out by the pond with no coat and wearing my nylon honeymoon nightgown instead of the heavy flannel with two layers of long underwear. I have an email from Julie and Gordon saying they are laughing uproariously trying to imagine me doing this, so here we go: I wear a moon tattoo on my face and have my white hair sprouting straight up in a fountain, held by two silvery scrunchies. I have gathered and wear all of my deceased mother-in-law’s largest rhinestone and crystal jewelry, including three pair of earrings. This week, Amanda found a wonderful lantern for me, one that uses a candle. The kids are on a “Night Hike” which features several wonderful activities. (My favorite of these is chewing up white mint candy in the dark with the mouth open so to watch the sparks. I should mention that while it is my favorite, there are many much more educational ones, like learning to discern night noises.) When the kids arrive at my station, I blather moon lore, and read my poem “Notes During the Eclipse,” which I also make 50 laminated copies of and give to all the kids as a memento of the evening. At the campfire after the hike, I tell the Segovian folk tale of how the aqueduct was constructed.
      This Tuesday, walking to and from Night Hike staff meetings, Paul, Mark, and Josh, I was able to catch through the trees a most amazing sunset, first bands of pink then a deep pink sky. And the warm night and the sky.  Nice nice nice, “almost like May.”
      Now, the day after, the warm weather continues, and I am on the way to Findlay for a reading of Elton Glaser and Will Greenway’s Ohio Bicentennial anthology, I Have My Own Song for It: Modern Poems of Ohio. 
 
 

Thursday, 3 April 2003, evening

"Oh, what company good poets are!"
                                             --Jose Marti

      Oh, but it was great to be with 14 poets yesterday. Emails are coming in from them, saying, “Oh, it was good to see so and so after so many years,” and “I had never met so and so before, and really enjoyed getting to know her.”
      When the children here at the park ask, “Are you famous?” I always answer with Daniel Thompson’s phrase, “Famous in the neighborhood.” Poets in Ohio are a neighborhood, really a rather genial and supportive group of artists who all know of each other and (if one hangs in long enough), who become friends. So readings like the one we held are like family reunions. I drove to Findlay with Bonnie Jacobson, a Cleveland poet I haven’t seen in over 7 years, and we chattered on so relentlessly, catching up, that we missed our exit on the turnpike and ended up wending back east through tiny farm towns I didn’t know till we hit Fremont (and then it was Bettsville, Fostoria, Arcadia, and Findlay.)  We arrrived at  The University of Findlay around 1:00 p.m. and went first to the Mazza Collection, a gallery of original artwork from children's books, and then George House for some lunch. 
      We were supposed to begin the day's events with a 3:30 session by the two editors, and I had a sinking feeling that morning when I received a campus email from a professor announcing an all-campus debate on the war at 3:30. And at 3:30, no one was in the room except for the poets, pre-empted by this wonderful war brought to us by George Bush's love of his father and oil. I apologized profusely, suggested people could just take the afternoon off, but everyone pulled up chairs in a circle and began telling stories of books and travel, with some preliminary confusion on my part about “whales” and “Wales.” 
      All the poets I know are inveterate talkers. Years ago, I went to an art opening with a painter, bumped into several writer friends. Afterwards, the painter said, “The poets were awful. They were all standing around talking, and no one said a word about the art.” I was stunned. “But we talked about the art all night,” I said. “No you didn’t,” he replied. “You told stories!” “Telling stories is how we talk about art!” I said.
      The conversation went on at 5:30 at a pre-reading party. Everyone made it: Elton and Will, my colleague Marianna Hofer and I, the Greenville poets  Lianne Spidel, Myrna Stone, and Belinda Rismiller (for Deanne Pickford), Jeff Gundy, Bonnie Jacobson, Ray McNiece, Robert Miltner, Lynn Powell, and David Shevin. And David Citino, in a way, too: we read his email and one of his poems on prison teaching, which so reverberated for the seven UF faculty members in the audience who taught many years at Lima Correctional Institution.
      At 7:30, we had the reading, and it was a lovely one, filled with many styles of reading. For Findlay, we had a miracle audience of 74 people, both town and gown, and many stayed afterwards to talk and buy and sign books and eat. (We ordered a platter of Buckeyes which were inhaled in the first 10 minutes!) Then some people drove off into the night and some headed off to find a martini (and were sorely disappointed as Findlay had shut down for the night by 9:30) and four of us women went to Marianna’s for turned out to be the first pajama party I’ve been to in decades. No ouija board, just more talk. And not a lot of sleep. 
      This morning, feeling like I had just experienced a very happy shipwreck, Bonnie and I eschewed the turnpike and set off east on route 224 through all those little towns like Greenwich, Homerville, and Nova. When we arrived back at the park, we checked out a few places like Hale Farm, and then she headed off home, and I headed to work with the kids.
      Using a wonderful article that Sam Hamill wrote on Broadsides (titled "Broadsiding") for the most recent issue of Speakeasy, I have been teaching the kids to make broadsides. At the end of day one, I show them many many of the broadsides I have collected over the years, from Bloody Twin press fine-paper letterpress ones, to a hand-signed William Stafford letterpress broadside, to ones I have done on my computer using fonts, to ones students have done in handwriting. I also teach them about the purpose of the colophon and try to distinguish the tradition of the broadside from a collage or a poster. The last day, after we have written, I ask the students to choose one of their pieces of writing and make a broadside. It’s nice closure to their brief time with me, and I love the array of 24 broadsides that I post, some lovely little crayon sketches under the words, others huge dazzling blocks and circles of glitter punctuating their odes to frogs, deer, and pines.
      I was at the Center till 6:00 p.m. hanging the posters in the room where they will be presenting tomorrow. Now I am back at the house, hoping to catch up on sleep soon. 
      The weather continues very warm, haven’t worn even a sweater or jacket for three days.
      Today was the one-year anniversary of Daun’s death, by the calendar, anyhow. I actually feel it on the 2nd, since she died in the middle of the night, and I was with her straight through, from 10 a.m. on the 2nd till she actually left us around 3 a.m on the third. So the poets’ company was a wonderful comfort yesterday. During the afternoon, I carried her drum and the kids played it while I recited a poem, and that was a nice little service. Then, in the evening I came home to emails from a few of Daun’s friends all over the U.S., reminding me that they remembered, too. 
 
 

Sunday, 6 April 2003, morning

“Another remarkably windy day; cold north west wind and a little snow spitting from time to time….” 
              The Journals of Henry David Thoreau, April 6, 1859

      I’m not one to write much about the weather but living in the woods will do it to you—especially living in the woods and reading Thoreau, I guess. Friday, we had an incredible downpour. I stayed in most of the earlier part of the day, then headed out in the rain for dinner at Joni and Alex’s with most of the EEC staff. Some of the interns invited me to jam awhile after dinner, and that was such a great interlude with Donna, Colleen, Stewart, Andrea, and Kai. Several of us play drums, and I marveled at the way they hold sticks, taught as I was that you only have stick control if you hold the left stick at an angle to the drumhead. Stewart noted that the first time he ever saw anyone hold sticks the way I do was watching an old (my emphasis, not Stewart's) Rolling Stones video. I need to see how Charlie Watts is holding his sticks these days. I am easing back into drumming here, having left it 30 years ago because I sold my drums to pay college tuition. It was fun to have a drum set (Andrea’s), along with all the terrific rhythm instruments that are available here. 
      Paul says that Watts is a jazz drummer who does Big Band stuff in his spare time, so he may still hold them the old way. Paul also told me a great story about Joni Mitchell, back before her work with Mingus. The story goes that she said to another musician, "Does the drum always have to do nothing but "chuckachuckachucka"? And the musician said, "It's time to get a jazz drummer." Of course Paul loves perpetuating the stereotype of rock drummers as untalented nimnus. There are websites full of them.
      Once I returned home, the drumming of the weather started with much more seriousness, huge crashing thunder and lightning and rain pouring as though from a million buckets. On the TV, storm and ice warnings.  I actually called Paul at 12:30 to see how he was. I found him in the middle of terrible ice storms he skated home from after a Me and Thee concert.
      Meanwhile, in the park, this weekend was the big park fundraiser, with people sponsored to hike to raise money. As one volunteer said, snow would have been easier. Mud makes for hard slogging. 
      Last night, I drove to Cleveland for the first time since I arrived here a month ago. I drove to the home of  a longstanding friend, Sally Hanley, and as I arrived, really hefted-sized sleet was falling. We ate good Mexican food and saw the Almodovar movie, Talk to Her. Some of the movie takes place driving from Madrid to Segovia, a trip I made often when I was a student in Spain in 1971. There is no landscape like it, and I haven’t seen it since then, except for a 1978 movie, Spirit of the Hive.  What does Unamuno say about Castille? Something like, “Sad lands, and stunningly beautiful.” We are hoping to go there this summer.
      This morning began gray and cold, but now at 10:20 by the new clock of Daylight Savings, the sun is streaming, a bright cold day.