First crystal-clear morning in weeks. I sit watching the sunlight move through the trees and a distant jet trailed by nothing but its roar.
March 2008
March 16, 2008
Yellow sun in an overcast sky: how is this possible? It lasts for a couple minutes before fading into a bright smudge in a net of branches.
March 15, 2008
Bare ground now predominates in the woods, and the ditches are loud with snowmelt. Two gangs of crows meet in the air, yelling, circling.
March 14, 2008
A heavy inversion layer—I have quarry trucks for company this morning. Over the roar, from the corner of the field, the first singing robin.
March 13, 2008
Sunrise. I’m in a staring contest with a groundhog who just emerged from under the house. I blink, and he disappears. A piercing whistle.
March 12, 2008
Last night, I almost stepped on the porcupine—it could barely walk. This morning, on the cherry tree beside the porch, bright yellow wounds.
March 11, 2008
Weak sun. A “v” of northbound swans. Bass notes of a distant thumper car sound almost like a drumming grouse, except they do not stop.
March 10, 2008
Gray sky, and the air is lousy with snowflakes. The usual birds are making the usual chirps. A train whistle, horrendously out of tune.
March 9, 2008
Winter’s back! My white plastic stack chair lies upside-down at the end of the porch. The snowpack has gone from quicksand back to granite.
March 8, 2008
A chipmunk emerges from the base of the stone wall and races over the soft snow. All this rain has brought out the blush in the red maples.
March 7, 2008
A red sunrise. Loud rending sounds as a gray squirrel peels bark from the dead elm tree in the yard, hanging upside-down like a nuthatch.
March 6, 2008
Back below freezing. Some four to five inches of snowpack remain, but every tree stands at the center of a dark wheel of melted earth.
March 5, 2008
A sky of shifting gray. This is basement-flooding weather. I crack out the harmonica, hoping that no one will hear it above the creek.
March 4, 2008
Rain and fog. A robin drops into the barberry bush, tut-tutting. Up in the woods, two deer stand with their heads buried in the soft snow.