Happy trials to you

Not going into the office in the morning, or the morning after that, or any office any morning until Olympia five weeks from now. Feeling guilty and relieved in equal parts, my clients having tapped me pretty near to the last full measure of exasperation, tomorrow I'll be recharging by packing the basement at home while three of my colleagues alternate between covering each others' and my appearances down in Courtrooms 1 and 2, and interviewing upstairs for my old chief p.d. job.
 

For the occasion, here are a few lines from my classmate Diane Raptosh, published poet and Akhmatova look-alike:

...Do I regret
having left Idaho?

Rest assured, I love this place.
Foxes walk on water here

and the weather changes faster
than two fluent trains of thought.

Can you tell me what to hold out for?
Some miracle of spring if I decide

to backtrack home? Or will I find
hoarfrost for a homecoming bed?

- from "Weather Watch," Just West of Now, Montreal, Guernica Editions, 1992