Yesterday was a mixed bag: a friend from the northlands stopped by to tell me about a bad diagnosis, the cat got sick from his annual shots, work stuff was aggravating. But on the other hand there were sunlight and late blossoms; a good baseball game on the radio; a dinner of panfried smelts, lemon and yogurt, buttery chard, wild rice with wild mushrooms, roasted eggplant and tomatoes, and apple crisp. There was a phone call from one son and a long text about books from the other. There were cardinals hopping on the fence and clean sheets on the bed and a fire in the wood stove and my head in the lap of my beloved.

That is how things go, I guess: we are whipped back and forth among sadness and terror, peace and silliness, desire and irritation . . . and meanwhile the headlines blare, and the innocents and the guilty die or crawl away, and the skies roil with clouds, they roil with stars.