In the shadow foreground is a garden box of garlic and shallots. Behind, a pot of mint, not yet sprouted. Under the sunny tree, spreading blue scylla punctuated with white crocuses.

No sun today. Up north, Harmony is grinding its teeth over a projected 12 inches of snow tonight. Down here, along the moderating coast, we might get a few wet flakes, but mostly rain and rain.

Now, in the morning darkness, a passing train blows its long and lonely horn. Paul is asleep, Tom dressing for work. It will be a quiet day.

Yesterday, as Paul and I walked along the neighborhood streets, a little girl accosted us. "Would you like to do my obstacle course?" she asked. Then, with a mostly appropriate six-foot separation (we tried hard, but children do forget), she showed us the chalk patterns she'd drawn on the sidewalk--little paths and hopscotches and laboriously scrawled instructions such as "High-five a tree."

"Of course!" we said. And so we hopped and high-fived our way down the sidewalk, much to the little girl's satisfaction.

By the way, it turns out that high-fiving a tree is extremely enjoyable. If you have an available tree, I recommend it.

Here's the first poem in William Blake's Songs of Innocence (1789) . . . a poem you might naturally turn to after an unknown child instructs you to hop down a public sidewalk and high-five a tree. It's titled, simply, "Introduction."

Piping down the valleys wild
Piping songs of pleasant glee
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me: 

“Pipe a song about a Lamb.”
So I piped with merry chear.
“Piper pipe that song again—”
So I piped, he wept to hear. 

“Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe,
Sing thy songs of happy chear.”
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear. 

“Piper sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read—”
So he vanish’d from my sight.
And I pluck’d a hollow reed, 

And I made a rural pen,
And I stain’d the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.