The sky clears at about the same rate as caffeine clears my head—a transitory state, no doubt, and host to a mob of crows.
clouds
2/24/2022
A leaden sky slowly lightening toward midday. A wintry mix is coming and the birds know it: juncos in the driveway swallowing tiny stones.
2/21/2022
Sun shining through thin, high clouds. An inversion layer turns the rumble of a freight train into something I can feel in my chest.
2/20/2022
Clear and still. The stream has subsided from a roar to a babble: one inmate instead of the whole asylum. The first, skinny clouds.
2/12/2022
Mid-morning. A large cloud over-brimming with golden light serves as ambassador for an advancing army of gray.
2/8/2022
Scattered snowflakes like free-range musical notation for scattered chirps—chickadee, nuthatch. A hint of sunrise fading from the clouds.
2/5/2022
Clouds going from pink to orange to yellow as the sky turns paler blue, all to the sound of running water and the whistling of doves’ wings.
1/28/2022
The first flakes, fine as flour, from a dull gray sky: far edge of the predicted blizzard. A silent crow flies over. A woodpecker knocks.
1/20/2022
Bright sun with a few clouds. Snowflakes wander this way and that like terranauts among the trees.
1/18/2022
Windy and overcast at moonset, at dawn. Just when I’m thinking it’s unremittingly bleak, the gray sky acquires the faintest hint of pink.
12/26/2021
The lacework of branches against the sky, with the half moon high overhead. A pileated woodpecker cackles. A small cloud’s belly turns pink.
12/22/2021
Patches of blue sky; occasional snowflakes. What appears to be a butterfly fluttering through the treetops must be a dead leaf.
12/8/2021
Rising late, what have I missed? The sky is white and the air is dead still. There’s no snow. The usual birds are making their usual sounds.
12/6/2021
Warmish. The sun almost emerges through thinning clouds, heralded by chickadees foraging high in the black birches at the edge of the woods.