It's 28 degrees. Roofs and soil and windshields are coated with rime, but the sun is already shining hard, and the forecast claims that we'll see temperatures close to 60 later in the day. I hope so. Yesterday was damp and raw, so I buckled down and finished all of my housework--dusting, vacuuming, mopping, bathrooms--with the hope of saving today for outdoor pleasures.

After I'd finished my chores, the three of us did wander out for a late-day, gloved, hatted, red-nosed amble around Evergreen Cemetery. I know I'm always talking about going to the cemetery, and you might think I'd get tired of it as a destination. But it's enormous: acres and acres of massive trees and winding roads, with ponds and ducks and a big sky. It's our neighborhood version of Prospect Park, without ballfields or a crowd . . . except for the dead.

I've started reading Philip Roth's Deception, which I must have picked up at the Goodwill or out of a free pile and then never gotten around to opening: it feels entirely unfamiliar. Tom is reading M. F. K. Fisher's Consider the Oyster. Paul is reading Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. All three of us have gotten melodramatically competitive about games. As a threesome, we mostly play contract rummy; as a twosome, cribbage. Scrabble is highly fraught, though Tom is a bad speller so tries to stay out of that fray. When we don't want to think too hard, we play Yahtzee. In all cases, we emote.

Fake drama is notably refreshing. Maybe that's why people love to watch sports.

For dinner last night I marinated pork chops in lemon juice and fresh garlic shoots and then braised them. I served them over farro tossed with butter, sorrel, and chives, with fresh cranberry-orange relish on the side. For dessert, I made hot cocoa with the last of the milk. Tonight we'll have chili with the last of my frozen poblanos, a spinach and grapefruit salad, maybe some cornmeal dumplings or squash rolls. Or maybe I'll use the squash to make a sweet bread for dessert.

Here's a poem that nobody wants to publish. But I like it anyway. 

Love Poem from a Tiny Husband

Dawn Potter

Some mornings your giant cracks open

the roof latch of your Fisher-Price house

just to watch you dream. You gaze into her eyes

as you roll gently on your yellow plastic couch.

If you had arms, they would swing like a child’s.

You are an apple core, a thumb.

Carefully, your giant snaps off your fireman’s helmet,

snaps on your baseball cap. Next door,

the barn moos. White chickens tilt in the loft.

Your dog’s legs bend every which way.

Crowd them into the house, your giant croons.

Let every kitchen shelter a horse.

Soon she will rise into the sky and steam west.

Every day, it’s her job to visit a character in a book.

Yours is to sit backwards in the bowl of your tractor,

pondering the hillocks of carpet.

This is how you earn your keep.

For now, though, you bask among her strong fingers.

At her command, you sway on your invisible feet.

No one is luckier than you,

for you adore a woman who invents all of the stories.

And when those stories are done,

your dear giant kisses the top of your round head,

tucks you into bed at noon,

and invites you to sleep for the rest of her life.