The small hole in the yard that leads to the underground stream has melted open, dark as a blowhole in the skin of a white whale.
2/10/2015
A sudden clamor of crows mobbing some unseen hawk or owl up on the ridge—that tone of righteous fury transcending language.
2/9/2015
Thick fog. A steady drumming of snowmelt on the porch roof. A bluejay in the barberry, out of what looks like sheer boredom, begins to yell.
2/8/2015
A gray day loud with traffic. The snowpack has slid half-way off the metal roof over the oil tanks, curling under the eaves like a claw.
2/7/2015
A gray morning. I notice, silhouetted against the snow, how all the heads in each patch of wild garlic are bent in the same direction.
2/6/2015
The only tracks on the road are mine, and the only clouds are right where the sun is. I hear heavy wingbeats followed by a raven’s croak.
2/5/2015
Cold again after yesterday’s thaw. A mourning dove flutters down into the lilac, gets settled on a branch and closes its eyes.
2/4/2015
From down-hollow, a pileated woodpecker comes yelling straight over the house, lands and falls silent, joining its mate to forage for grubs.
2/3/2015
Birds flutter back and forth across the yard to drink the dark water of the spring. The frigid air glitters with scattered snowflakes.
2/2/2015
The cellophane-crinkling sound of ice-sheathed branches swaying in the wind gradually gives way to the clatter of falling fragments.
2/1/2015
A sharp-shinned hawk careens out of the woods, dives for a junco, misses. It lands on a locust limb and ruffles its feathers.
1/31/2015
Clear and very cold. The wind has erased all tracks but its own, and the trees’ etiolated shadows rock back and forth like trauma survivors.
1/30/2015
A few small birds are among the sideways-flying snowflakes. From the tops of the pines, two blue jays issue their usual denunciations.
1/29/2015
Shrunk in the cold, the porch floorboards pop loudly when I come out. In my snowshoe tracks below the porch, a scattering of rabbit pellets.