A lovely foggy wet melting Saturday morning, with the occasional pickup hissing past the driveway on its way to the dump; with Nigel the blue parakeet cracking seeds in his cage, and Anna the large messy poodle licking her feet, and the old clock ticking like a leaky faucet.

As I was making dinner last night, a poem came to me--all compact, beginning to end, a little lyric. I've been so engaged in my giant narrative poem that I was shocked to feel a lyric rise up in me. It needs detail work, of course, but I have the shape, the sensation, the movement. It was sweet to feel it come forth, that little song.

Tom has a photo-show opening this afternoon at the Maine Center for Contemporary Art in Rockport, if you care to drop by and eat cheese cubes with us.