Every branch and twig is white with rime, and overhead, a latticework of contrails. Three crows skim the treetops on their way to a mobbing.
2011
December 2, 2011
Cold at sunrise. A squirrel gathers clumps of dry leaves from the last oak to still have them and stuffs them into the top of a hollow snag.
December 1, 2011
Chickadee and nuthatch alarms are ringing over something in the tall weeds. A squirrel pauses beside the porch to scratch its ear.
November 30, 2011
A rabbit wanders back and forth in the half-light of dawn—a nervous eater, hunched around its hunger. When it freezes, it almost disappears.
November 29, 2011
Dawn light turns everything briefly to gold: house, trees, the three deer that run a short way into the woods and stop, nostrils flaring.
November 28, 2011
The clouds part just above the horizon, where a weak sun glimmers like a bonfire among the skeletal trees. Distant shots ring out.
November 27, 2011
Dawn gives a rust-red belly to the clouds. Over the stream, I’m astonished to hear the ethereal notes of a hermit thrush song.
November 26, 2011
Another warm morning. A Carolina wren pops out of the bridal wreath bush like a rabbit from a magician’s hat and ascends the lilac, singing.
November 25, 2011
The heavy frost melts quickly, even before the sunlight reaches it: the grass glistens. I am thinking for some reason about paperless books.
November 24, 2011
The ground is still saturated from Tuesday’s rain. Through the hole in my yard, the sound of the underground stream’s insurgent song.
November 23, 2011
A pile of fresh dirt at the woods’ edge: a groundhog has dug a den under the roots of a poison ivy-throttled maple. Will he itch all winter?
November 22, 2011
Fog. High in a skeletal birch, the silhouettes of ten goldfinches are almost the right size for leaves, moving in their own slow wind.
November 21, 2011
No wind, but some slight motion of the air brings the sound of trucks and the sour smell of sewage up the hollow. The first drops of rain.
November 20, 2011
Warm and overcast, with the smell of rain. A sudden gust pulls a flying crow sideways. A squirrel digs pretend holes in the yard.