It is 8 a.m. in western Massachusetts, and I am watching the heavy raindrops spill from the oaks down onto the paving stones below. Brilliance hovers at the bird feeder: male and female cardinals, a male goldfinch, an indigo bunting. All are unreal in the wooded gloom. How can these colors exist? How can such motion fill the air? The birds are like the fairy tale.

We drive back north today. And tomorrow our house officially goes up for sale. The prospect feels so strange. Where do I live?

In the meantime: Words, words, words. And garden and grass. And sorting out books and tools and clothes and dishes.

I am reading Christina Hutchins's collection Tender the Maker. In it she quotes Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus: "Every glad aperture is a child or grandchild of a parting / through which pass the astounded." It seems pertinent, given these birds, this rain, these silent ticking clocks.