September Travels

The past month, poetry readings took me to Georgia, West Virginia, and New York. I am happy for all of these opportunities to read from my book and to meet and visit with poets from all around the country.

This photo is from a trip I took with the daughter to the Maryland Science Center. Marie Howe—who is coming to read at American University in DC on October 27th—wrote a poem in which the speaker hurries the daughter along and then wonders why she’s doing that. I find myself in that position (hurry, hurry) and really why am I hurrying so often? When the daughter wanted to stop and watch one of the dinner cruise ships move away from the harbor, I stood there patiently. Okay, maybe I wasn’t the most patient, yet I did not tell her to hurry. We watched every single thing they did to move the boat, and I took many deep breaths.

In this photo, she was running towards dessert. Although it was cold, we resisted the end of summer with a last Italian ice at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Now…on to crackling leaves and fires.