Katerina and Alexander

I got a note from my friend in Belarus. I asked him to send an update to the Ballad of Kate and Sasha. Surely it is Spring there, I suggested. Send photos of your bohemian life, of wine and picnics and summer dresses. Sasha wrote back that it is not Spring there yet, that there is no place to go for such things. He will try, he said. He and Kate will go picnicking. In the meantime, he sent this photograph. Kate and Coca-Cola, warm clothing, an abandoned truck, abandoned countryside. It is hard to imagine. Here the weather has been too beautiful to live up to and I am blue.

Waiting for the weather. What else is there to do? Here is a poem that always tightens my throat with emotion, an invitation from Robert Frost.

The Pasture

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.
I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.

I guess I'll wait for Kate and Sasha.