I was outside pruning the branches of the tangled, woody honeysuckle, whose bright-orange flowers draw hummingbirds, and planting new treasures from the nursery in the sandy, rocky dirt near the house, patting the ground hopefully. The sky had begun its procession from pastel periwinkle into blue dazzle, a wren performed its little cascade of notes, and I felt pretty good. Not so far away, fires were raging, viral variants were spreading, and in so many ways, we seemed to be on the cusp of doom.
Jack Gilbert summed it up nicely in his “Brief for the Defense”:
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies