It’s cold. The first two miniature daffodils are open, and stand among the crowd of upright buds with their heads bowed toward the earth.
2010
March 25, 2010
I watch it grow light, then start to grow dark again. A rustle in the leaves that starts as the footfalls of deer turns to rain.
March 24, 2010
A cloudless morning, and cold, but the field sparrow who just returned yesterday is trying to get something started with his rush of notes.
March 23, 2010
The last patch of snow vanished in the night, leaving only the fuzzy erasers of pussy willow to remind us of the purity of the blank page.
March 22, 2010
Rain from what must be thin clouds. The sunrise glow lights up a deer at the wood’s edge, bright as litter against the brown leaves.
March 21, 2010
The song sparrow sings at first light—just once, like an alarm going off. Then nothing but the creek’s quiet conversation for 20 minutes.
March 20, 2010
I hear distant goose music and scan the sky. A thousand feet up, against a web of contrails, a lone Canada goose is heading north.
March 19, 2010
Cardinal, song sparrow, phoebe, robin… the spring chorus is already taking shape. Overhead, the calls of crows, their labored wingbeats.
March 18, 2010
Thin stratus cloud, but the air’s clear as ever. The first phoebe is back, revisiting all his old haunts to make sure his song still works.
The first rays of sun catch a… March 17, 2010
The first rays of sun catch a small spider spinning a line down from the porch eaves. One degree above freezing, and a deep blue sky.
March 16, 2010
Four deer in the yard at daybreak, their pelts still bearing the imprint of the ground where they slept. I sneeze. White flags of panic.
March 15, 2010
The last few feet of the tulip poplar’s lowest branch is yellow, the portion that had been stuck in the snow—debarked by hungry mice.
March 14, 2010
A pair of mallards—probably the ones who nest every year in the field—are dabbling in the flooded creek, here, there, like connoisseurs.
March 13, 2010
After all-night rain, the snow is almost gone from the woods, and the gray-brown leaf duff glistens, slick as an amphibian—one that roars.