Slow Thaw.

It's cold out there, good and, but it's not the bone-cold of the past couple days. It's good coffee weather. Stand on the porch with a mug of coffee and think to yourself, Is the mailman walking through my garden right there? Because he could be. The bulbs are only barely starting to come up. It wouldn't in any malicious way be his fault. Should I set up some kind of string around it? Like a little roped-off area? Should I hang up a sign? Or should I just wait in my house like some kind of maniac, some sort of sniper, blinds just open enough to peek through, and watch him to see where he walks?

Sometimes, in answer to some of the above, no. I've seen him walk the long way around. He's a pretty good guy, puts up with the dog's fierce and abiding and well-accomplished dislike of him with good humor. But what about other times? What about when we have substitute mailmen? The substitute mailmen make me nervous.

See-your-breath cold. Camping cold. Makes me want for boiling water and a pouch of reconstitutable dehydrated eggs.

It's gray. A half-version of sunlight snakes through every now and then. Darker out west. Streets wet, driveway wet, ground wet. Sound of the trash truck tires on the wet pavement. Sound of the snow and ice just starting to melt out of the gutters. There's a pinkness to the sky. A kind of wash of something that's nearly color. A flush, a bruise. A spill. The crows and jays have something to say about it. It was in the sixties and seventies right before AMR left, the weather all damaged, and out in the middle of the back yard, right where she left it, there's a lone chair pointing to where the afternoon sun sits.