My weekend up north was beautiful, busy, restful, hilarious, restorative, ghostly, tearful, puzzling, elegiac. Just before I left, we went on a long walk through the woods . . . and what a relief and a joy it was to stand under the hemlocks as sunlight filtered onto the packed snow, as the half-frozen stream pulsed among the snow-masked stones.

Now, in Portland, a steady wind blisters the bay, the ripples all riding east, the clouds casting navy-blue shadows, the brown park grass ridged with strips of ice and melted chunks of ex-snowmen.

I would like to write today. I feel it burgeoning. On the other hand, I have many obligations. Anything could happen.

On Saturday afternoon I watched a shrike pluck a chickadee off the side of a house and impale it. Anything will happen.