soft mild air
slightly humid
sun gleams through haze

so many signs of spring
bulbs coming up
creatures venturing out

sometimes in unexpected juxtapositions.

***
Dearest, how are you? I hope all is well with you. I'm feeling a little tired, in a pleasant mood, back from a walk around here, including on the soft brown pine needles of the trail behind the ancient churchyard cemetery. Soft footfalls, needles crunch underfoot, pine aroma rises around me, tiny saplings emerge green in the deciduous wooded surround...

I was very happy to get a message from my friends today, that they're mailing keys tomorrow and that I should be on the lookout. I breathed a sigh of relief to get the news - so all systems are "go" on this end. And darling, what a great idea, I will make pissalediere to bringdown. Sweet onions are on sale this week, I have olives, anchovies too... perfect. I make a variation - call it "pizzalediere" - that is on a homemade bread crust rather than on decadently butter-laden pastry (I leave that to be savored for dessert, in tiny pieces).

I am just sitting here in lamplight, alternately putting my chin in my hands, tapping at keys, sipping from an icefilled glass, thinking of you. A couple of times on my vitruvian fingers today I counted... Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. That makes nine, single digits now, righthand pinkie remained down, and so will, one by one, my other digits, until the day before, like the Da Vinci, of St. John I think it is, will be one digit standing, pointing up.

***

***
So I've found the image, it's not precisely as I had recollected it... no matter.

***
Darling, I don't know what more to say right now, thinking of you, with a sense of baited breath, and of wonder.

***

Buried Lede

summery lunch
fresh mozzarella, ripe tomato
basil, mesclun
deconstructed on a plate
compressed into bite size bits
of Great Barrington baguette
previously captured quarry
defrosted in oven
tender basil
in heady expunged release
within fragrant creased folds
of plump yielding alabaster
squished with
deep dark goosh
incarnadine to the point of rupture
arranged, torn, inhaled,
savored, devoured

***