We got nailed with another round of non-forecast, laundry-destroying showers yesterday, plus I got caught in the rain on my walk and came home soaked. But the plants are loving the weather, so I will not complain. The herb seedlings I dug in on Monday are glowing, pea and onion shoots are spiking, and the tulips are in their glory. The air may be chilly, but I'm basking in these evenings of warm wood stove and open windows--the ultimate northcountry luxury.

Yesterday was filled with this-and-thats: some editing, some manuscript work. I managed to force myself to send out a couple of poems, and I fidgeted around with a few blurts from my notebook. I read about the Brontes; I read Drabble's The Sea Lady. I repaired the torn sole on one of my favorite sneakers. I started figuring out dates for my autumn visit to Brooklyn. I wrote to a friend about her poems. I ordered an old-fashioned fifties-style metal patio table so we can eat dinner in the backyard this summer. I fell asleep on the couch for an hour.

Today will be another loose-limbed day, showery and cool and mostly unplanned, though we are going out to the movies tonight, to see Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. Happy damp May Day, with its cherry-tree lanes and tulip crowds, with its passerine birds shrilling hectically in gray first light, with its bad-hair middle-school boys playing theatrical kickball in the middle of the street, then suddenly scattering for dinner. Happy damp May Day, when lawn-care guys attempt to spread mulch and stare at their phones simultaneously; when one of those innocents decides to take a whiz behind the client's garage, unaware that three kitchen windows have a front-row view.

Here's a poem I haven't been able to stop thinking about this spring--

Assault

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I

I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.


II

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!