Early Spring.

Oh, the snowstorm that couldn't. Or wouldn't. We're due now for heavyish rain, semichilly temps. It's Virginia that's due for breathless side-of-the-road local newsmageddon. All of us are supposed to see mid-fifties by the weekend, though, so none of any of this probably matters too, too much.

The wrens are nearly finished moving into the front porch mailbox. The Bradford pears at The Toad's school are budding out. I'm typing this one-handed with a 24-day-old baby sleeping in my other arm. Forsythia. Crocus. Mockingbirds chasing each other power line to gutter and back again.

I'm trying to head out back to light one more little fire before we turn too warm for that sort of thing. I'd sing a sad song about having somehow lost this last month or so of cold weather if I weren't just as eager for that first warm front porch morning, coffee in the wooden chair, smell of things blooming, light westerly breeze—

Heavy-headed committee members. That's what Sandra Alcosser, in her lovely poem "In Case of Rapture This Taxi Will Explode," calls tulips in a bud vase. Those daffodils out back bring that line to mind this morning. "With what sharp pleasure I would welcome company into my life," she says at the end, or something very near that.