The rain is pouring down, falling in sheets from the eaves, transforming mudholes into ponds, swelling the buds on the lilacs. The air quivers.

On Sunday, when I was digging, I found a snake, tiny and cold, red-edged, curled into a tendril like a pea shoot. But today there will be no digging.

Yesterday I dusted my desk, shelved books, stacked papers. Today I begin a new project. I wonder if it might involve the Aeneid. That poem is calling to me, calling me back, calling me to look again. I wonder if I could copy out the entire epic or if I would die first?

In the meantime, here I sit, gazing at the rain dripping from the fir trees, watching the small songbirds cluster at the feeder, listening to the dog groan  and the woodstove sigh and the gutters leak and the clock tick.

I have the sensation of being no one in particular.

The rain is pouring down, and down.