I love this moment in the season of equality, when both the day and night are the same length. I enjoy firing the wood kiln at this point in the year when the night shift doesn’t feel endless. Today, I went out in the morning light with my coffee. It was sixty degrees. The world was wet and seemed full of potential as the crows recited their ebony poems. Spring is always about beginning again on our unfinished pages.

Why Are Your Poems So Dark?

Isn’t the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn’t the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn’t banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
“Why are you sad so often?”

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.

—Linda Pastan, in Poetry, 2003