Ten below zero this morning, on this last day of February, yet a spring sun is shining. The days are longer, and the tree shadows fall at new angles on the snow. Owls, the earliest nesters, are beginning to shift and fidget in the forest.

I am still rereading the Bronte biography, still slowly absorbing John Luther Adams's Winter Music, and now also feeling mournful about the death of Leonard Nimoy, now also feeling the pleasures of this sunshine and this cup of black coffee, now reminding myself to wake up my son for theater practice, to empty the recycling bin, to fill the birdfeeder, and now I am wondering what I should read next, wondering whether, when I go outside to fetch firewood, I will hear the pileated woodpecker again.

The brain is a busy collation of time. Its shifts of attention are so swift in the moment, so slow on the page.

Grammar is a cracked and struggling mimic of the mind.