It’s a flirtatious March day.  The sunshine winks at me from the windshields of passing cars, and the wind is toying with my curls, and here I sit at a sticky outdoor table with my laptop and my coffee mug.  I should be working.  I should be clearing the backyard of a winter’s worth of dog poop, or purging my closets and drawers of wool and flannel, or at the very least gathering some of those blooming daffodils for the pitcher on my bookshelf.  Instead I am googling everything from “poems about spring” to “how to start a garden,” and inundating my system with cup after cup of the most ordinary Maxwell House brew.  

I will not argue that I could have used the free bright hours of this afternoon much more productively.  Even so, I do not consider them wasted or misspent.  I claimed them, in my own small way.  I have found some good poems.  I have seeded my heart with Edenic aspirations that I hope to one day realize in the sunshine and soil of my future. 

And now remains to me the long-lit length of early evening, to do the tasks I’ve been postponing.