Monday September 01, 2008

A cool, clear autumn morning. Every few minutes, another alarm call breaks the silence: pileated woodpecker. Bluejays. A frantic squirrel.

On this date

Watching snowflakes, I start to wonder whether any are making it to the ground at all. Are they just the same flakes circling the house? …

An almost unearthly calm, punctuated as ever by birds: woodpeckers, counter-singing wrens, a flock of juncos drinking from the dark stream. …

From the other house, the squeak of a cloth on window glass. Juncos forage under the crabapple. The thermometer inches up toward unfreezing. …

An echoey call of a Carolina wren sounding like an old-fashioned telephone. The yellow spot in the clouds that marks the sun slides shut. …

The excited yelling of my young niece, out tracking animals in the snow with her grandmother. A Carolina wren scolds from the lilac bush. …

Cold, with a slow but steady snowfall. The immobile silhouette of a rabbit, ears erect, resembling nothing so much as a quarter note. …

After a cold night, the temperature climbs to 40 by mid-morning and the snow loses its hard sparkle, flattens into a shining white pelt. …

Each blanketing of snow so far this winter has happened while we slept. How superstitious to insist that it all must've fallen from the sky! …

After last night's rain, the snow fits each dip and hummock more tightly, like a garment shrunk in the wash. The creaking of doves' wings. …

Day Six of the thaw, and the sound of running water dominates the pre-dawn darkness—still faintly illuminated by the threadbare snow. …

With each new snowfall the ground grows more uniform, our footprints grow harder to read, and cries die quickly, as in a soundproofed room. …

Snow-covered hillside in the half-dark: every tree, bush and log adrift in blankness. The dog statue in the lawn still wears a white stripe. …

The Morning Porch