Bare ground in the herb bed has risen into spires—a city of frost. A downy woodpecker booms like a pileated on a hollow limb.
2011
November 18, 2011
Just two degrees below freezing, yet somehow things are sharper, crisper, the crow’s wings like blades against the blue, its shout a shot.
November 17, 2011
Indian Summer is over; it’s cold again. A squirrel bending over to groom its genitals tumbles off the branch and lands on the next one down.
November 16, 2011
Dense fog and silence—the instant wilderness found inside a cloud. A leaf falls 100 feet away and I hear the soft rustle when it lands.
November 15, 2011
Muddy footprints cross the porch and stop in front of my chair. Their probable owner crouches nearby in the rain like an evicted squatter.
November 14, 2011
Warm and wet—almost a March day, were it not for that rustle the rain makes on leaves, still crisp and curled in the first blush of death.
November 13, 2011
Mid-morning, and my feet are propped on the rail as usual. A female downy woodpecker lands on my right boot and taps at the worn-down sole.
November 12, 2011
A grown fawn nuzzles her mother’s flank as if to nurse. The mother whirls around, head lowered, threatening with invisible antlers.
November 11, 2011
Cold and gray—November weather at last. Oak leaves twirl and somersault past the porch, accompanied by a few motes of snow.
November 10, 2011
A crow flies off cawing and returns silently to the same tree. In the garden, comfrey leaves have begun turning face-down into the earth.
November 9, 2011
Another cloudless morning. Sunlight glints on abandoned spider and caterpillar silk in every tree and between them—a threadbare garment.
November 8, 2011
At 5:15, I’m startled by the dark sky, the closeness of the stars. At daybreak, seven deer stand within a stone’s throw of the porch.
November 7, 2011
Late morning, I take a break from crisis management to watch a hungry groundhog, his pelt shining brown and orange and silver in the sun.
November 6, 2011
A Carolina wren breaks the silence, bobbing up and down on the peak of the springhouse roof: one side frosty, the other steaming in the sun.