So I didn't plant peas yesterday. Turns out when I opened my shipment of seeds: no peas. Apparently the variety was out of stock, so I'll have to track down a packet elsewhere. But the day was in no way a bust. I planted leeks, red onions, and potatoes; dragged out the hoses and the backyard furniture; moved the cold frame off the spinach so it wouldn't overheat; and otherwise bustled around the place.

Now Howl, howl, says the cat at the door, and I step into the wet darkness. Already it's 50 degrees out there and the birds are shrieking in the trees and the baby spinach plants are trembling with joy. A warm night, a warm rain, a humid dawn, and sun on the way . . . Eden, after so many weeks of raw cold.

It's not even 6 a.m., but things are already busy around here. T is putting on his shoes, draining his coffee cup, getting himself ready to head out into the city to take pictures. The cat is washing. I am heating water for tea and considering laundry and brooms and stove ashes and bed making. Time swirls, a little eddy, splashing among stones.

Today's class will be about metaphor, about the clarities of joy and fear. I cannot teach a class about ranting or polemic. I can't abide them, no matter their political persuasion. I don't know what a poet's purpose is on this earth. But surely we owe attention to the particular, the stone and the leaf and the warm hand. If not the poets, then who?