First light through a window screen. Low tide, tipped-over chairs, frost on grass. On the horizon a long low island.

In the cottage coffee burbles. The wood stove heats. On the kitchen table a spray of forsythia, buds still tightly closed, parts the air. The sky and the sea are streaked with pink. Somewhere outside, in the tangles of raspberry canes and old apple trees, a goldfinch is chattering.

The sweetness of this cottage, this quiet cove . . . last night, as T and I walked down the driveway from our friend's house to our own, the cries of peepers and bullfrogs pulsed under a sky packed with stars.