Deep blue sky. A small cloud forms right where I’m gazing. In my garden, a rock has melted the snow around it as if it’s alive.
snow
2/15/2019
Drip and chitter: the snow is melting, and up at the other house, the birds must be finding seeds that had been buried beneath the feeders.
2/11/2019
Blinking the sleep from my eyes, I watch a chipmunk awoken from hibernation racing from covert to covert through the inch-deep snow.
2/9/2019
Bright sun, bone-chilling wind. The hillside has lost its white blanket, which makes it feel even colder. The clouds are again worlds apart.
2/6/2019
Cold rain; the snowpack is in tatters now. At the top of a locust snag, a gray squirrel’s tail waves and twitches like a mad flag.
2/5/2019
Small clouds rise from the decaying snowpack and drift off through the trees. In the yard, a vole’s tunnel system is beginning to emerge.
2/4/2019
The snow has gone slushy, turning the hollow from a soundproof room into an echo chamber. Over the traffic noise, a junco’s cadenza.
2/3/2019
Patches of bare yard dug up by deer. Patches of blue sky which the sun now and then pops through. The drip drip of meltwater from the roof.
2/1/2019
Snow fine as fingerprint powder; it’s almost zero. Two cardinals and a jay in the crabapple tree wait their turn to drink from the spring.
1/30/2019
Take one polar vortex. Add westerly winds, seasoned lightly with snow. Stir in some birds and trees. Heat with a star 93 million miles away.
1/29/2019
Another snowfall. The small hole in the yard that leads to an underground stream remains open, like a breathing hole for seals in sea ice.
1/27/2019
Trees at the woods’ edge with their branches out to catch all the light they can—or in this case, snow. A pileated woodpecker’s flaming cap.
1/26/2019
From under the house, rabbit tracks encircling a half-eaten raspberry cane, raccoon tracks going straight to the stream—muddy on the return.
1/25/2019
The wind raises snow from the ground like a necromancer. Basking in the sun’s feeble heat, I watch the six-spoked wheels settle on my coat.