School starts tomorrow.  Actually, I’ve been back a couple of weeks, but classes start tomorrow.  Am I ready?  Nope.  Am I looking forward to it?  Sure.  Is this how it is every single August?  Yup.

Periodically, I’m going to have my students perform something I call the Short Form Debrief.  They’ll write very short poems on a particular subject.  This will not take a long time.  There is no pressure.  It’s a low-stakes sandbox way of playing with language.  And because I generally don’t ask my students to do any work I haven’t done or am not doing myself, here’s my SFD from my summer vacation.

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“Salem, Mass.”

 
The oldest place I’ve ever seen:

trees glistening like seaweed canopies,
sailboats in the harbor and flowers in “sweltering” 80-degree heat,

houses crammed with centuries of ghosts and books and fires.