Friday April 03, 2009

Dave Bonta April 3, 2009

A warm east wind. Curtains of rain on the almost-open buds of red maple, pussy willow, daffodils, and lilac leaves like green bishop’s hats.

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Rain thickening. Puddles in the driveway acquire something like feathers, as if the water is already preparing for its return trip. …

Sky and ground both flat white. A squirrel missing a quarter of her tail is fossicking through the snow, ignored by a high-speed chipmunk. …

Titmouse, chickadee, wren. I squint into the sun. The bitter wind rattles the cover of the magazine beside me—which, I notice, is Rattle. …

A classic snow shower—the air filled with fat, slow-moving flakes—peters out, followed by more flakes blowing like dandruff off the trees. …

My ears are still adjusting to the lack of urban noise. Crow, chickadee, red-bellied woodpecker. The stream's slow gurgle under the yard. …

I come out to find my chair at the end of the porch and turned to the north. A jay is doing his best to reply to a raven's imperious croaks. …

Fresh from drinking out of the cold stream, a chickadee swipes its bill rapidly against a twig, then goes to join the others in the birches. …

Cloudy and cold. From over at the neighbors', the low rumbling of a large machine and the excited shrieks of children eddy on the wind. …

Three days past the last rain, the creek sings in a lower key, like a boy turning into a man. Free of silt, it's learning how to be blue. …

A wet spring snow clings to everything and coats both ends of the porch, where something very tiny has left an arrow-straight trail of dots. …

Cold air, bright sun. Snow-motes drift down from a cloudless sky. A mourning dove's song. Dad calls to tell me Mom's having dizzy spells. …

When angels announce the coming of spring, they use flutes: faint calls of tundra swans filter down from above the rose-tinged clouds. …

The Morning Porch