It's Saturday morning, and I wallowed in bed till 6. I don't have to teach either day this weekend or travel anywhere, and though I have things to do, I can do them whenever I feel like it.

What I feel like doing right now is sitting here in my couch corner, wrapped in my shabby red bathrobe, peacefully drinking strong black coffee, and staring out into the lavender sky. It's cold out there, just 7 degrees, but the middays are thawing a bit. There was even a little melting in progress yesterday, when Betsy and I were out on our walk. Maple sap starts to run in this kind of weather, on these bright days and frigid nights, and my sap starts to run too. In the firmament the red-tailed hawks are courting, and down on the prosaic ground I lift my muzzle like a dog, snuffing up the first faint whiffs of change.

During our walk Betsy and I talk about poem revision, our own and other people's: what is the resistance? what is the sudden dazzle? She is planning a talk about Cavafy, and I am immersed in Lyrical Ballads, and we are clumping along the cemetery paths, two mild-mannered aging ladies out for an afternoon constitutional, our brains stuffed with roses and briars. I have a teenage urge to giggle. Poetry as disguise, as secret handshake. Bet you don't know what we're thinking.