6°F. A patch of weeds furred with hoarfrost alerts me to a hole in the yard I didn’t know about: a burrow? An underground spring?
February 2008
February 28, 2008
Keening moans from the hole in the big walnut tree. Then snarls: a squirrel rockets out, falls to a lower limb. The moans grow louder.
February 27, 2008
Fire engines wailing through the gap, air horns, the frantic melisma of ambulances. The wind blows snow against my cheek—pinpricks of cold.
February 26, 2008
It’s snowing. A pileated woodpecker drums twice in Margaret’s yard: a resonant timpanum. Then sleet: rapid brushes on a taut skin.
February 25, 2008
A squirrel chased off the bird feeder races all the way to the dead elm in my yard, where it sits perfectly still for the next ten minutes.
February 24, 2008
Cold, clear, and still. Three dark silhouettes of deer half-running, half-dancing through the laurel with the sun-flooded powerline beyond.
February 23, 2008
After three months of being written about daily, the world glimpsed from my porch seems more recondite than ever. Slow diatoms of snow.
February 22, 2008
Siren, train whistle, a red-bellied woodpecker ululating in the yard. It’s snowing. Squirrel tracks cross the porch in front of my chair.
February 21, 2008
Late to rise, I get a faceful of sun. Sparkles on the frosted snowpack only inhabit the glare between the shadows, like stars on strike.
February 20, 2008
A jeering band of bluejays lands in the locusts. Of human noise, nothing but distant jets. Long fingers of sunlight between the trees.
February 19, 2008
Cloud-bellies at sunrise: white, yellow, blue-gray, mauve. We’re back to cold weather, and only the house finch sounds happy to be alive.
February 18, 2008
Just out of sight through the dripping woods, something dangerous must be passing: a succession of deer blast its odor from their nostrils.
February 17, 2008
Gray sky at sunrise. The porcupine is late; I watch it coming from a long way off. It pauses to chew on the porch—no taste like home!
February 16, 2008
It’s back down to 10°F this morning. So engrained, to think of cold as down and heat as up—the opposite of the true situation here on earth.