It's drizzling presently, but temperatures are already in the mid-40s and are forecast to climb into the misty 60s: a fine Saturday for reducing a mud pile. I, however, am recovering from an insomniac night so am not full of enthusiasm about hard work. Perhaps the coffee will mend that attitude.

For now I'm sitting in the darkened living room, watching day unroll through the clouds. Specks of color dot the brown yard: crocuses, scylla, hyacinths, spikes of daffodils, sprawling tulip leaves. Buds swell on the trees and shrubs, and a haze of green rises from beneath the dead grass blades. Everything is still very new.

I've been reading a Robertson Davies's novel, copying out the Inferno, working to keep up with teaching and editing--not writing much, though I'm hip-deep in words. I ordered two cords of firewood this week: the first firewood I've ever bought. I listened to baseball games on the radio and imagined summer stretching before us like a long fairy tale. I've been feeling vaguely cranky and unsettled: some combination of political dismay, rejection letters, and broken sleep, but also a seasonal urgency: sap running, the heft of a shovel in my hands, shoulders arched under a weight of stones, the musk of wet earth.