Moving

It was a week without Internet.

No virtual distances covered. Only real ones that sometimes required the careful setting of one foot in front of another, up steps, down hallways, even into basement corners.

Occasionally a camera found a view without packing boxes.

Friends stayed in contact.

New Door, New Windows

That's my new door. Not the one with the columns and the little classical tympanum overhanging it. The door nearer the back, disappearing into the side of the house.



When I took this photo weeks ago on a sunny March day, someone else regularly used that door to climb the stairs to her second-floor apartment.

This morning I walked for the first time through the rooms as legal tenant. Empty and sun-filled, the spaces filled me with peace. There will be room for lots of thinking there, lots of writing, lots of waking and falling asleep.



I am ready for the cheer.

I am moving a life.

Reading Poetry to Someone in a Restaurant

They hadn't noticed me. They did not know that I could hear them.



He read part of a poem to her. It was clear from the pacing of his voice that he was reading poetry. It was clear that he had probably done this before with her.

I waited for her response and wondered whether it would betray any touch of the self-conscious, the impatient, the dismissive.

On the contrary, her words -- low and admiring -- expressed appreciation. And appreciation not because he had read a poem aloud to her in a restaurant but because the poem deserved appreciation. It was part of a long conversation between them, I sensed, and a conversation that never relegated a meal out to a distraction or a diversion. No, it was the conversation that took them out. It was the conversation that took me in.

Easter Sunday Moments

The day started with 8 o'clock Mass. The setting, close to where I live, suited me.

Six hours later I was holding the newest member of the family. Here he is, napping with me on his first Easter afternoon.

Pause in Packing Boxes

After days of rain here in New England, the sun came out today and the temperatures rose through the afternoon. I went for a walk in a favorite place after work and surprised something inside stubbornly resisting the warmth and light that seemed determined to make a bouquet of this day.

What part of the universe dared bring me flowers in this guise?

Dared try to disarm me and nudge me into new happiness and an almost easy hope?

With each lungful of air, though, I felt myself giving way. With each sudden scent arising from the grasses and the trees, I recognized the age-old path. I could trust its turns. I could trust the urging of its progress through these April minutes making up my April hours.

I would end up somewhere good.