Dear post-semester mood,

You are flighty, aren't you? For days, you're gray and rainy, chilly, austere. And yet your light--the light lasting longer is a temperature of its own, tending toward gusty but sunny, or scattered sunny, or tiny hits of sunny in an ambiance of mercurial.

The tulips have spent their glory, all but a handful--a dark purple Queen of the Night, a streaky pale yellow and red. The flax and the centaurea are bluing up the joint. And columbine are making their first spiky statements. These are your flowers, are they not, Post-semester mood? I believe that, at one time or another, you planted them.

Post-semester mood, your obsessive checking for student retorts online has just about ended. But your letter of recommendation writing is still turned up to a million. That's on the "Things I Said I Would Do" meter. Which is still hitting the red zone regularly. The needle is twitchy.

Still, though I am in the throes of you, Post-semester mood, I am nonetheless hanging out in a quiet place. I am in a straightened and tidied room, whichever room I'm in. I'm wearing lighter colors and I'm holding a finger to the winds to see if it's time to have breakfast on the patio.

Post-semester mood, you are transient, changeable. You're a sudden directional shift. You're accommodating and, it must be said, a little languorous. You're my capricious--a bit--companion, and yet you're my steadfast. I wake up, there you are. I tire of a task, you're ready for a little reading, a small irresponsible excursion, a nap. I do the dishes and you are there, making it feel like a tiny stolen joy.

Post-semester mood, I hope you stick around. You're my unreliable, constant consort, perfect for this green, warming, restless, liminal state of being. Provisional, that's what you are, and I need you for now, until the new jurisdictional mood settles in, God only knows when.

fitfully yours,

htms