The consolation of beets

So, I've got a bunch of submissions out in the world and I'm meant to start editing Hump - my first trade book of poetry - sometime in September.

All of which mean waiting.

Waiting more-or-less patiently, because no amount of thinking/dreaming/scheming can make it/them happen any sooner.

(Did I mention I'm the most impatient patient person in the world? Or is that the most patient impatient person...)

Early in the summer, I consoled myself with the fact that the Edison manuscript, the one I'm working on now, is full of longing but also trains. And Morse Code. And frantic silence.

Deeper into this cool and wet summer, when I wasn't able to schedule writing days, consolation could be found in bushel baskets of strawberries & raspberries from a u-pick-it farm, with 101 summer salads, with heritage beets from a local market and old-school crabapples, picked from my mother-in-law's backyard tree.

(More after the turn...)

And then, of course, mashing and bashing, freezing and canning, eating and bleating about how good it all is...

But no matter how pleasantly distracting all of this has been, I miss my regular writing days. I miss being able to regularly visit the forest, camera in one hand, tea in the other.

So here's to the long hazy fall we're due, to scritch-scratching the ms. into something bleeding but beautiful, to seeing friends old and new at the Writers' Festival.

Finally, looking a bit further, here's to the friends who will also have books out in 2010: Tracy Hamon, Anna Swanson, Lori Cayer. (second-first-second book)