A friend in Australia writes to remind me to "feel both sadness and happiness, because both make life." An friend in Alberta writes to say,  "Rain . . . finally arrived up there [in Fort McMurray]. Corner maybe finally turned." A friend in Maine writes to tell me she's "loving [my] yellow and white kitchen!" My mailbox overflows with hope, sweetness, melancholy. A gift.

Now leftover potatoes are heating in the oven. The poodle twitches in a bar of sunlight. The unquiet house murmurs to itself. At random I open the poems of George Herbert and read this stanza of "Miserie":

Oh foolish man! where are thine eyes!
How hast thou lost them in a crowd of cares!
Thou pull'st the rug, and wilt not rise,
No, not to purchase the whole pack of starres:
There let them shine,
Thou must go sleep, or dine.

"Or dine"? What an unexpected ending. True enough, I suppose. But I still long "to purchase the whole pack of starres." Probably you do too.