Rose-tinged feathers puffed out against the fresh snow, the mourning doves look delicious! Their wingbeats are a marriage of fife and drum.
2007
12/30/2007
Two squirrels chasing around the trunk of a tulip poplar so quickly, I swear there’s a third. Whose tail is whose? Which one is in heat?
12/29/2007
I am blocking on common bird calls—with each sneeze I forget another name. Behind the trees, the sky is white and gold, blue and gray.
12/28/2007
The stream this morning is full of auguries, such as: “If you want to be master of all you survey, live in a ravine.” Carolina wren song.
12/27/2007
Chickadees and nuthatches are exchanging news, each in its own language as always. I’m watching snow, but hearing the hiss of sleet.
12/26/2007
The birds eating seeds on the back steps of the other house all fly at once, the rush of wings like a dovetail shuffle of cards.
12/25/2007
Christmas—the quietest morning of the year. The stream is a full chorus. A pileated woodpecker flaps overhead, cheering itself on.
12/24/2007
Cold and windy. A chickadee’s two-note spring song echoes off the ridge. Behind the trees, floating above the horizon, one yellow cloud.
12/23/2007
Thick fog at dawn, gray against the snow. Slate-colored juncos call back and forth: Where are you? A wind comes up.
12/22/2007
Yakety-yak on the porch, dee dee dee in the birches, and everywhere a drip drip drip drip drip: gray solstice morning.
12/21/2007
The sun behind a wash of cirrus seems almost approachable: a bonfire, the eye of a wolf. All the small birds of winter calling at once.
12/20/2007
Distant sound of a rasp on wood: the porcupine’s last meal of the night. In the springhouse lawn, the silhouette of a cat taking a shit.
12/19/2007
With the ground white, squirrels are visible hundreds of feet up in the woods. And when I shut my eyes, the trees reappear on my eyelids.
12/18/2007
Blue sky carved up by the ley lines of industrial man. Who else leaves such arrow-strait trails for mile after mile? Only Coyote.