After all-night rain, snow cover persists in the woods, but it must be thin. The trees loom and fade as the fog shifts. The stream roars.
February 2011
2/27/2011
Three stalks of garlic in the yard have kept their heads throughout this long winter, seasoning the snows. The distant fluting of geese.
2/26/2011
Gray sky. A gray breast feather floats down and lands on the snow. Ten minutes later, a sharp-shinned hawk appears in the big maple.
2/25/2011
A thumping in the crawlspace under the house and muddy footprints in the snow: the resident woodchuck is in heat. Rain drums on the roof.
2/24/2011
Winter on this side, winter on the other side, and in between the road’s dead grass and gravel. One crow cries, high and shrill.
2/23/2011
Backlit by the sun, a hoarfrosted forest with ice still glittering underneath. I gape and run for my camera, a tourist on my own porch.
2/22/2011
Six inches of fresh powder. A pair of squirrels wrestle in it, then go up the big maple, couple on the trunk, and retreat to separate limbs.
2/21/2011
A fresh cement of wintry mix traversed by chipmunks, tails italic with urgency. Ice-coated branches rock in the wind—a cellophane sound.
2/20/2011
A wind in the night swept the broom off the porch; I find it in the garden. A thin milk of clouds. The sun’s whiskers slowly disappear.
2/19/2011
Just audible over the wind: a junco’s chitter. Leaves lift off from the newly melted forest floor and join a harried flock of snowflakes.
2/18/2011
I hear voices: snowmelt whispering, murmuring, sighing, gurgling a hundred ways at once. Up in the newly bare field, a turkey gobbles.
2/17/2011
It’s in the 40s and noisy with the sound of trucks. Each tree stands in a small circle of melted ground like a bear balancing on a unicycle.
2/16/2011
A river of fire between the trees where the sun reflects off the snowpack’s white glass. The deep blue sky is marred only by crows.
2/15/2011
Sunrise stains the western ridge. A squirrel wanders back and forth on an icy snowbank, stirred, no doubt, by the memory of a buried nut.