One goes away for a night and a day, in late March, say the 26th – 27th, and returns to wake to a world transformed.  The solid ice has given away to water, the gravel paths reappear, and the bulbs planted last fall send out their green tips.  With a winter like we have had on the Cape, everything in the garden is a gamble.  If bulbs bloom, a blessing.  one can let go of control until the weeds come out. It will snow again, astounding us.

My eyesight no longer what it was, and tired this morning, as well, provides me with a view of ducklings I think on the water, though they could be crows.  The insistence of bird call from the trees is loud this morning, competing with the hum of the refrigerator; appliances, too, must make an adjustment for the season.

In our world, a plane is crashed.  The Dalai Lama, bless him, says he might not reincarnate.  War continues.

I return to a favorite poem:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow…

                                                     —TS Eliot, The Wasteland

It ends, you remember, shantih, shantih, shantih.

“The peace which passeth understanding,” was one way of translating the word, he wrote.

The poem in its entirety, here.







Last night the trees were covered in such white snow, that it felt like I chanced upon a fantasy, a world like Narnia, say.

 It is Neptune’s blizzard now, shaking yesterday’s snow off the limbs, scattering the snow sideways.

My neighbor’s shingled wall looks like it’s dusted with powdered sugar.  The power comes and goes, like the women

and Michelangelo, and the wind howls and howls.  Blizzards in the daytime are of course easier to take than at night,

when the snow offers serenity in moments of quiet.  The cats are curled up, asleep, in separate corners; they have

been antsy with

each other, picking fights, and I blame the lack of fresh air ( drafts don’t count.)

But of course, drafts do count, and my novel is a mess, as I rethink so much of the dialogue ( needed?) and action

( necessary?).  Piles of essays and stories and other work wait for my attention.  I am dreaming of winter vacation

( December? January?) but Bird by Bird, these too will get done.

Another blizzard, 2015

The pots outside are capped like muffin-tops with snow. The walks are smooth.  It really is beautiful.