First crystal-clear morning in weeks. I sit watching the sunlight move through the trees and a distant jet trailed by nothing but its roar.
March 2008
3/16/2008
Yellow sun in an overcast sky: how is this possible? It lasts for a couple minutes before fading into a bright smudge in a net of branches.
3/15/2008
Bare ground now predominates in the woods, and the ditches are loud with snowmelt. Two gangs of crows meet in the air, yelling, circling.
3/14/2008
A heavy inversion layer—I have quarry trucks for company this morning. Over the roar, from the corner of the field, the first singing robin.
3/13/2008
Sunrise. I’m in a staring contest with a groundhog who just emerged from under the house. I blink, and he disappears. A piercing whistle.
3/12/2008
Last night, I almost stepped on the porcupine—it could barely walk. This morning, on the cherry tree beside the porch, bright yellow wounds.
3/11/2008
Weak sun. A “v” of northbound swans. Bass notes of a distant thumper car sound almost like a drumming grouse, except they do not stop.
3/10/2008
Gray sky, and the air is lousy with snowflakes. The usual birds are making the usual chirps. A train whistle, horrendously out of tune.
3/9/2008
Winter’s back! My white plastic stack chair lies upside-down at the end of the porch. The snowpack has gone from quicksand back to granite.
3/8/2008
A chipmunk emerges from the base of the stone wall and races over the soft snow. All this rain has brought out the blush in the red maples.
3/7/2008
A red sunrise. Loud rending sounds as a gray squirrel peels bark from the dead elm tree in the yard, hanging upside-down like a nuthatch.
3/6/2008
Back below freezing. Some four to five inches of snowpack remain, but every tree stands at the center of a dark wheel of melted earth.
3/5/2008
A sky of shifting gray. This is basement-flooding weather. I crack out the harmonica, hoping that no one will hear it above the creek.
3/4/2008
Rain and fog. A robin drops into the barberry bush, tut-tutting. Up in the woods, two deer stand with their heads buried in the soft snow.