It's barely light, just a sort of fragile shimmer, yet already the grass is glowing green. Yesterday's rain has worked a transformation: suddenly everything that was dead is growing and, in this dim foggy dawn, nearly vibrates with the tension being alive. Driving to Farmington yesterday I saw fiddleheads for sale beside the road. Ours, down by the shady stream, are usually on the late side; but I'm longing to run down into the woods and see. I love to eat fiddleheads, and I love to pick them. The spot where they grow is a damp patch alongside a small running brook, a place where I've startled wood ducks, where I often hear the long eerie singing of a thrush--that is, so long as the poodle doesn't bustle in officiously. I love my dog dearly, but she is such a tourist.

No fiddleheads for me today, however. I'm off to Farmington again for another poetry-reading round at Beloit. We are all sad because Marion Stocking, who has been the journal's mainstay since the 50s, is very, very ill. It will be hard to choose poems for the journal without the sight of her happy face.

But the good news is that my husband and I are all of a sudden madly in love. Isn't it funny how that happens: how the routine scales fall from your eyes, and there you are again?