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
2/28/2008
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.
2/27/2008
Fire engines wailing through the gap, air horns, the frantic melisma of ambulances. The wind blows snow against my cheek—pinpricks of cold.
2/26/2008
It’s snowing. A pileated woodpecker drums twice in Margaret’s yard: a resonant timpanum. Then sleet: rapid brushes on a taut skin.
2/25/2008
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.
2/24/2008
Cold, clear, and still. Three dark silhouettes of deer half-running, half-dancing through the laurel with the sun-flooded powerline beyond.
2/23/2008
After three months of being written about daily, the world glimpsed from my porch seems more recondite than ever. Slow diatoms of snow.
2/22/2008
Siren, train whistle, a red-bellied woodpecker ululating in the yard. It’s snowing. Squirrel tracks cross the porch in front of my chair.
2/21/2008
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.
2/20/2008
A jeering band of bluejays lands in the locusts. Of human noise, nothing but distant jets. Long fingers of sunlight between the trees.
2/19/2008
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.
2/18/2008
Just out of sight through the dripping woods, something dangerous must be passing: a succession of deer blast its odor from their nostrils.
2/17/2008
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!
2/16/2008
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.