The Morning Porch is on hiatus until March 6. Feel free to leave your own front-porch observations in the comments.
February 2012
Monday February 27, 2012
A downy woodpecker gleans breakfast from the dead cherry, chirping between taps. A mackerel sky. The smell of thawed earth.
Sunday February 26, 2012
Pileated woodpeckers forage on all sides, hammering, drumming, cackling, whooping. I feel as if I’m surrounded by a troupe of insane clowns.
Saturday February 25, 2012
Snow blows sideways and rises from the ground in snaky spirals. A Carolina wren dances on top of the stone wall like a wind-up toy.
Friday February 24, 2012
Rain has erased the last patches of snow. The lilac bush gives birth to a cardinal, a wren, four white-crowned sparrows and a chipmunk.
Thursday February 23, 2012
A killdeer’s song drifts down from high overhead, and to the south, the piping of a ragged flock of geese struggling against the high winds.
Wednesday February 22, 2012
Dawn. Three deer become two, become three again. The sound of squirrel teeth on black walnut shell—that harsh madman’s whisper.
Tuesday February 21, 2012
Sunrise. The bluebird warbles once, as if unsure whether it really will be that kind of day. The cardinal keeps singing his one good note.
Monday February 20, 2012
Querulous cries of a raccoon, like lost notes from a soprano clarinet. Two pileateds hammer for their breakfast—an arrhythmic percussion.
Sunday February 19, 2012
First light. The silence is broken by a rustle in the leaves, followed a little later by the hollow sound of a creek stone being flipped.
Saturday February 18, 2012
The sun glints off periwinkle leaves in the yard where snow has just melted. All sounds come from a great distance: crow, woodpecker, train.
Friday February 17, 2012
Blue sky. The snow has retreated to the northwest-facing hillside under the shelter of the trees. A train’s whistle made wavery by the wind.
Thursday February 16, 2012
Sleet rattles on the roof like a fast typist. Two deer in the springhouse meadow: when they stop moving, they vanish into the brown weeds.
Wednesday February 15, 2012
Out before dawn, I hear nothing but the drip of melting snow, gaze at a photographic-negative version of the woods: light ground, black sky.