Saturday May 23, 2009

The lilacs are fading fast. Where did the spring go? A hummingbird moth pays court to the dame’s-rockets—the new avatars of purple scent.

On this date

With crows about, a raven skulks through the pines, talking with its mate in sotto voce rattles. They fly over the porch with labored wingbeats. …

Half-way through a slow snowstorm. The birds seem restless. First a titmouse, then a nuthatch land on the edge of the porch to tell me off. …

Snow fine as fingerprint powder; it's almost zero. Two cardinals and a jay in the crabapple tree wait their turn to drink from the spring. …

A few degrees above freezing; the ground's thin coat of snow already looks mangy. I spot a tiny fly walking purposefully across the porch. …

A patch of dirt laid bare by the snow plow is aswirl with birds of all kinds. Even a robin appears, as if to assess the likelihood of worms. …

A sharp-shinned hawk careens out of the woods, dives for a junco, misses. It lands on a locust limb and ruffles its feathers. …

A red-bellied woodpecker yammers from tree to tree, all around the yard. A builder drives by with nothing in the bed of his truck. …

A squirrel walks slowly through the woods, searching its memory, then stops, digs through the fresh snow and comes up with a nut. …

Dark clouds part in the west, flooding the yard at sunrise with sunset light. A log furred with white fungi glows in the snow-free woods. …

The sleet whose ticking woke me at 6:00 has stopped. Five degrees below freezing. I stick out my arm and hear raindrops hitting my sleeve. …

Wind and water, scattered chirps of winter finches, the sound of two freight trains going through the gap: exactly the music I needed. …

Clear at sunrise. The squeaks of courting squirrels are almost indistinguishable from the squeaks of the trees, rocking in the warm wind. …

It's sleeting: a harsh whisper, nothing but occlusives. After ten minutes of no other sound, a crow calls. Scattered chirps from the feeder. …

The Morning Porch