It's spring in upstate New York - a beautiful miracle once again. Yesterday, walking beside our pond, I thought, "What perfection! The birds, my puppy trotting beside me, the fish in the pond nipping to the surface, the first flowers beginning to bloom. Truly, God made the earth a perfect paradise, then created Man, the perfect receptor, to enjoy His creation."

But actually this was a funny moment, because in my hand, as I strolled along, was a plastic bag full of some puppy crap and a dead fish that had somehow flung itself out of the pond during the night (or been flung out by the other fish, for all I know) and been gnawed on by a raccoon or something. Where was I bound? The garbage can near the road. Also, I was limping, because several weeks before a group of dogs, including the adorable one trotting beside me, had, in their solipsistic dog-energy, knocked me to the ground. Ah, life! No doubt, had they been hungrier and I weaker, they would have eaten me, with even my own dog participating, she who now, as I write this, lies cutely beside me, like some dog in a Christmas card.

Whenever I meet someone earnest, I like to remind him/her of this principle, which I call: You are only seeing partly, you blind bastard.

We do this all the time: round off reality to fit our self-flattering projection of it. I could easily have written a poem this morning about spring coming once again after a long, dismal season of frozen whiteness, etc, during which gloom came to be my watchword and so forth, a season now undone by glorious spring, wherein the fish and the flowers and the sun and the puppy were all trending upwards, towards the light, as was I, as was my heart, etc, etc.

But I probably would have elected to omit the part about the puppy crap plus the dead fish in a baggie. It's a harder poem to write, the one in which, yes, fired by the beauty of the spring, I am trending upwards, etc, but while trending upwards am fastidiously holding my left hand (the one grasping the crap/fish bag) out away from my new shirt, while trying not to imagine the contents of said bag, the disgustingness of which would have distracted me from the newborn lilies calling to me from the secluded glen, etc, etc.

Because the puppy was with me, and we do not want the puppy to know the way to the road, I hung the crap/fish bag in a maple tree to await the morn.

Then, being me - carefree, prone to daydreams, a beauty-seeking free spirit - I forgot all about it. It is still there this morning, turning slowly in the breeze, covered in white, because last night, alas, there came an early spring frost.