What a nasty first day of April. All night long we endured a variety show of snow rain slush rain snow wind slush wind rain snow, etcetera. You might call it a slopstorm. Now, thanks to the road salt, the sidewalks look like they've been spackled with half-melted shortening mixed with graham-cracker crumbs. The streets are a blackened mess of plow scrape and water. The ocean is hiding under a cloud, and Tom is hiding under the comforter.

Fortunately we have plenty of coffee and bagels, and we don't own a dog we have to walk. Fortunately this apartment is warm, even though the windows are drafty. Fortunately I cooked too many mussels for dinner last night, so we have a lot left over for mussel stew today. In other good news, I went to the dentist on Thursday and learned that I do not need a root canal. What news could be better?

Probably I ought to do some housework, but I don't mind that. I've got a stack of library books to study, and a crossword puzzle book for wasting time. I can play a few games of String with the cat. I can listen to records. If I can override my hatred for my kitchen, I can bake cookies. I can watch the Final Four and text about the games laconically with my son.

I've also got that new poem vibrating in its corner. I could look at it. Or I could leave it alone. Either way will feel like the right thing to do. If I choose to leave it alone, I can keep copying out Carruth's long poem "The Sleeping Beauty." I can keep considering the structure of Komunyakaa's "Autobiography of My Alter Ego."

I was thinking the other day about the difference between boredom and idleness. Idleness is a canoe floating down a placid stream, whereas boredom is a hideous sucking monster. Maybe the difference between the pair is analogous to the difference between melancholy and depression. They seem to be made of the same materials, yet one is a gift and the other is torment.