October 22: Bread Loaf

Autumn poetry reading.

Fireplace crackling

with warm applause.

October 21: Sky-watching

Writers’ conference.

Watching Orion’s slow rise

over the mountain.

August 29: Mountain nocturne

No moon tonight: clouds.

No owl: crickets.

Mountains, fields: a seamless dark.

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August 27: Moonlight in Vermont

Last light gilds the fields.

Raven calls the full moon up

for eight cameras.

 

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August 26: Bread Loaf, Vermont

You've been here before.

Greet the hayfield like a friend,

wave to the raven.

 

 

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August 19: Hay fields

I've spent many summer weeks of my life here at Bread Loaf in the heart of the Green Mountains of Vermont, as a Middlebury undergrad (this is Midd's "mountain campus"), at the School of English graduate program, and at the Writers Conference, most of them when I was in my twenties. The sun shines brightly this morning on the vast mown lawns and the uncut hay fields that surround the campus, and I can't help but lose myself in reverie over the many memorable experiences I've enjoyed in these fields. Like riding with about ten other people crammed into an old Mercedes in the middle of the night "on safari," randomly driving through the tall grass while blasting weird music. Or clowning on the "Robert Frost Rock" in the middle of one field, a rock where he'd once been photographed. Or sweet summer kisses. Or long walks picking wildflowers with my best friend. Or watching bluebird fledglings forage in the weeds...

Amid timothy,
uncut goldenrod, reside
fields of memories.

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August 18: Bread Loaf Writers Conference

I'm visiting the Bread Load Writers Conference, where I worked many summers in my youth, for a weekend. This incredible place, centered on an old inn nestled in the Green Mountains, is one of those magic, timeless spaces where all experience, even ordinary ones, are somehow transformed. I've reconnected with old friends and already experienced some wonderful readings by the faculty writers. For a writer, there's nothing more invigorating and inspiring than being steeped in the writing life like this, in such a beautiful setting, even if just for two days. Conversations about haiku while looking out on the sunlit hayfields where Robert Frost once walked... Waitstaff in feathered boas and fezzes... A reading from her memoir by a dominatrix... Seeing the stars clear and bright over the silhouette of Bread Loaf Mountain as I walk back to my room... All part of the Bread Loaf experience.

I don't have the words
to describe so many words
so beautifully read.

A couple of the Bread Loaf dorms

Front porch of the Bread Loaf main building, The Inn

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