Tardy, not absent

The blossoms are coming. They’re late. It was a long, wet spring with a freak snowstorm in mid-February. But jackets can come off, at least in the afternoon. Long hair grown inside during the pandemic shakes out like foil in the sun. Carpenters bang together more “permanent” outdoor restaurant seating. Not just tents and tarps, but actual wooden structures meant to last. Hope is in the air.

I took a large sack of books to the free library by the hospital: novels I will not read again, a few more history books, a couple of biographies, important economics I couldn’t stay awake long enough to read. Spring cleaning. I kept all the poetry.