The thermometer reads zero this morning, and Ruckus hates his life. Every morning I notice that deer have gnawed another inch off the brussels sprout stalks that are still poking up out of the garden spot. Deer routinely gobble up apple trees and raspberry canes, so those stalks must be frozen solid.

For a change I don't have to drive anywhere to pick up sweaty teenagers, but on the flip side one of my headlights is burnt out, which foretells a slow ramble among the logging accessories while the guys at the garage decide they don't have a replacement to fit my car. In the basement, the washing machine objects to draining: another distraction for the day. "We sit indoors and talk of the cold outside," remarks smug Robert Frost as Tom suits up for his bitter day on the roof of a cow barn.

And now here is Ruckus, as smug as Frost, yowling sweetly and barging under my elbow as I write. And there, from the yard, rise the cough and groan of Tom's unhappy truck motor: and the basement silence of the washing machine is ominous. R.F. sniffs, scratches his nose, scribbles an illegible line in his notebook. The permutations of cold may interest him, but washing machines have never been his concern.

Grief may have thought it was grief.
Care may have thought it was care.
They were welcome to their belief,
The overimportant pair.