And the train whistle blows and the carnival goes till there's only the tickets and crows here

The smugness I feel at having successfully caught a train at an hour when I am usually just managing to fall asleep was somewhat mitigated by the discovery that Barbara's Bestsellers apparently keeps hours more like my usual and in consequence wasn't yet open for business. Good thing I brought Patricia McKillip's Kingfisher (2016). The last time I looked out at these tracks, everything was sugar-glossed with snow and the sky was winter-eating blue. Now the trees are the locust green of late summer and the sky is hazy with translucent cardings of cloud and the sunlight gets thickly in everywhere, even though I'm wearing my jacket against the quiet car's air conditioning; it was shirtsleeves weather already by the time I was waiting for the 85 bus, having packed as lightly as possible thanks to the prospect of shlepping my backpack around more of New York City than is ideal for either my lower back or the quarter-sized blister with which my right heel opportunistically presented me last night. I don't care. Our next stop is Providence. I can't wait to see the salt marshes.

[edit] I saw a doe. She was the red sesame color of a shiba inu; she sprang away from the train into the trees at the marsh's edge, showing the white flash of her tail. The water is the wind-flagged blue clouded under with green that makes me want to go swimming. I saw a line of ducks on the far side, nearer the houses, but I have seen ducks in salt marshes before: not deer.