It's raining lightly, and already almost 40 degrees. Compare that to 14 yesterday, and 7 the day before. March is a schizophrenic month. Still, I'm feeling the spring itch. Yesterday afternoon I dragged the toolbox outside and assembled my new cold frame, which is now set up along the west wall of the house, and filled with bags of frozen dirt. It's too early to plant but not too early to thaw soil.

The morning's thick mist smells like wet leaves, and I can feel my winter-flattened hair coiling into spitcurls in the new humidity. The day will be gloriously dreary: ground fog rising from the snowmelt, invisible sky, everything the color of marsh . . . . and the air alive and trembling.

Yesterday I finished my prep for next weekend's class, fiddled with some revisions, read and walked and played cribbage with Tom, sautéed pollock and bok choi for dinner, talked to a son, folded clothes, washed dishes, wrestled with my cold frame. Today will probably be mostly housework, plus some conversation with Donna about Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain, plus maybe an outing with Tom, if the mood strikes. 

In the distance a train bell clangs. 

Closer at hand, rain drips from the roof . . . tick tick tick, against the stove vent. Upstairs Tom is sleeping. Beside me the cat is sleeping. The quiet overtakes, a quiet that is not stillness, a quiet composed of sound.

Accident Sonnet 11

Dawn Potter

Saturday morning and it’s pouring rain

in Maine where it’s not supposed to rain

in January and I am sitting in a corner

of my couch squinching my mind away

from bad news trying to pretend that today

will be super-relaxing so calm and productive

and probably I’ll look younger also.

 

Meanwhile the clock ticks and the furnace

hums and the washing machine sloshes

and the twenty-first century slips and slides

along its dented rails and you: What are you

doing right now? Are you gazing through

a windowpane into the sodden dark? Are you

yearning over the strangeness of love?

[from Accidental Hymn (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]