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.
2011
February 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.
February 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.
February 14, 2011
43F at sunrise—it feels balmy. The trees rock back and forth under a cloudless sky, touching in ways they rarely do, clattering, groaning.
February 13, 2011
To the south, the hysterical-sounding whoops of a pileated woodpecker. To the north, the rapid taps of a downy, that tachycardia.
February 12, 2011
Flurries. The chittering call of a Cooper’s hawk; the small birds continue feeding. A strangled cry. Finally, the jay calls like a jay.
February 11, 2011
Sun mediated by a thin wash of cloud lays soft stripes of light atop the snow, as if the air were full of pollen, as if it were August.
February 10, 2011
Bitter cold at sunrise. A distant F-16: that high, harsh sound of something being torn. A few small clouds hurry off toward the sun.
February 9, 2011
Dawn: a thin band of vivid pink. I glance down at my coffee, and when I look back it’s gone, the sky’s gray. A titmouse’s monotonous song.
February 8, 2011
Last night’s wet snow sticks here and there—blank spaces on the wind’s map. One of the 50-odd bergamot heads still wears a toque blanche.
February 7, 2011
A squirrel tunnels into the icy snow. I hear my neighbor walking to his truck a quarter mile away. Inside, all the clocks are blinking.
February 6, 2011
There must be open water in the ditch: jay- and sparrow-shaped silhouettes are going up and down the dogwood’s laddered branches.
February 5, 2011
Sky and ground are the same flat white. I hear my mother at her bird feeder yelling Go! Go! Go! Go! as a squirrel bounds over the icy crust.
February 4, 2011
Dim sun. Trunks and branches still sheathed in ice glisten, surrounded by duller companions like glitterati on the streets of New York.