Saturdays are always rainy in Maine, but for the moment no actual water is falling. This morning's air is thick with humidity. Fog curls through the open windows, and a robin trills relentlessly--repeat, repeat, repeat. Gulls swirl overhead, squawking and wailing. The sky has the dull glitter of a galvanized pail, and the gardens throb with green.

The day will be filled with this-and-thats. It's far too wet to work outside, but maybe I can walk. I've still got lots of Shelley homework to finish; my future daughter-in-law asked me to read the draft of an article she's working on; I'm one of the openers at my friend Marita's book launch tonight, which means I've got to choose a poem. No doubt there are other obligations that I've temporarily forgotten.

And now here comes the rain again, tapping and pattering.

On the mantle are two slim and velvety Siberian irises and the first milk-pale peony, unfolding. I am thinking of poems, though I am not thinking about either writing or reading them . . . more, thinking about how the feeling of poems twists and tugs around me like a scarf fluttering in the wind.