I slept late this morning, plowing through a series of vivid dreams about having no control over anything: "Are these my clothes?" "Did I forget my new green backpack on the train?" "Why are my children leaving for a college I've never heard of?" I woke up semi-bemused from these imposed worries. Why the college dream, for instance? An urge to manage other people's choices isn't one of my primary faults (though the clothes and backpack anxiety are right on target). Maybe my brain is taunting me: "Are you really as easygoing as you claim?" Or possibly: "You ought to be bossier, like I am."

It's Saturday, and already sunshine is pouring through the laden maples, striping the houses and streets, drying the dew, inflaming the songbirds. I have no particular plans, at least none that depend in any way on time. Just garden, house, words, Tom, in whatever pattern that pleases us. Idling by the front windows, I see that the Siberian iris have begun to open, the massive white peony is unfolding, the peavines are climbing fast.

Yesterday I chipped away at a difficult-to-shape poem, then transcribed another that seemed nearly finished as a first draft. It is interesting to be juggling both sorts at the same time, to note that the existence of one doesn't seem to help the other. The hard-to-fix poem remains hard to fix; the easy flow of its colleague makes no difference at all.

Afterward, as I knelt in the garden, filling a bowl with salad greens for dinner, I remembered how irritated I'd been that morning, after I'd crowed about the Trump conviction and then read or heard multiple Eeyores groan versions of "Things are still terrible, it's wrong to celebrate, the apocalypse is coming, America used to be a great place," et cetera. Gracious, let us take our small happiness where we can! And let us see that, now and again, things are black and white. We witnessed the battle between an evil man and the democratic rule of law. Whatever the future brings, his conviction was a magnificent victory worth celebrating. And let us also understand that America has always been a troubled nation. It never was an Eden. Our history of slavery makes that clear. What democracy gives us is possibility, a door that might lead us into a better version of our communal selves. It's not wrong to cheer for that hope.