From over the ridge, a patrolman’s amplified voice, his words unintelligible. A blue jay does his best impression of a red-tailed hawk.
2010
Thursday December 30, 2010
I stare bleary-eyed at a chickadee darting through the lilac, listen to dueting wrens. The sun, too, is blurred by a kind of mucous.
Wednesday December 29, 2010
Feathery contrails outline a wedge of blue. On a high branch, three mourning doves sit facing the sunrise. The middle one preens its wings.
Tuesday December 28, 2010
Frozen trees rasp in the wind. I think of a song I once heard about a dictator where the fiddler scraped the strings with his fingernails.
Monday December 27, 2010
Between gusts of wind, the burble of a Carolina wren. Two ravens veer low over the trees, croaking, pursued by a pair of crows.
Sunday December 26, 2010
So quiet, the downy woodpecker tapping a dead branch sounds as loud as a pile driver. High overhead, the half moon like a big right ear.
Saturday December 25, 2010
A few flakes in the air. A gray squirrel wanders through the lilac branches, scattering a pair of juncos. The squeaky calls of finches.
Friday December 24, 2010
Before dawn, nothing but wind and trains. In the crown of a birch, Venus burns so fiercely, even the fast-moving clouds can’t extinguish it.
Thursday December 23, 2010
Geese go over in a mob, flying this way and that. A flock of juncos at the woods’ edge rises and falls to the rhythm of its own wind.
Wednesday December 22, 2010
A dark morning, with grim news awaiting me in my email. A fox squirrel crosses the snowy yard, the mellow flame of its tail floating behind.
Tuesday December 21, 2010
Solstice sunrise turns the western ridge red as an altar. A brown creeper fishes in all the dark valleys of the walnut tree’s bark.
Monday December 20, 2010
A flurry reveals the secret weavings of the wind, spreads a shroud over the porch, and litters my propped-up legs with cryptic asterisks.
Sunday December 19, 2010
The cattails’ broken blades are white with rime. Two juncos flutter up under the springhouse eaves, investigating the empty phoebe nest.
Saturday December 18, 2010
A dark bulk approaches through the dawn woods: upright, bipedal, enormous feet crunching through crusted snow. My brother, back from owling.