At dawn, I watch the moonlight fading into the snow like the light going out of the eyes of a dying creature. The gurgle of the stream.
2008
March 23, 2008
Easter Sunday dawns clear and cold. The yard is stippled with fresh tracks. Quiet except for a mourning dove and a red-bellied woodpecker.
March 22, 2008
Five inches of fresh snow, the kind that clings to every twig. I catch a movement up in the woods: a deer raises its tail to take a shit.
March 21, 2008
The wind has smashed my chair, so I carry my coffee up behind the barn to watch the woodcock circling in the dawn sky. A satellite flares.
March 20, 2008
Windy and cold. The last three dots of snow visible from the porch have disappeared in the night. Overhead, a small window opens onto blue.
March 19, 2008
Hours of hard rain have brought out the green in tree trunks and branches, in laurel leaves, in moss. Even the fog has a slight green cast.
March 18, 2008
One degree above freezing, and something part-way between rain and snow is coming down, already half-melted, making an audible shush.
March 17, 2008
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 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.