Thin fog. A yearling fawn play-mounts his mother, and is mounted in turn by his twin. A robin tut-tut-tuts from the driveway.
March 2012
Friday March 30, 2012
Frost has silvered the grass where a rabbit grazes, one hop away from a spreading patch of sun. When a crow flies over he flattens his ears.
Thursday March 29, 2012
A small cloud has lodged among the trees at the woods’ edge: shadbush in bloom. Dawn leaks through a dozen rifts in the overcast sky.
Wednesday March 28, 2012
At mid-morning, the sky grows dark. Rumbles of thunder over the noise from the interstate. A small, white petal flutters down.
Tuesday March 27, 2012
Woodpeckers drumming at sunrise. It occurs to me that they might not be telegraphing “I am here” so much as verifying that the world is.
Monday March 26, 2012
A cold wind at sunrise. Daffodils nod, while the forsythia shakes its yellow fingers in a vaguely apotropaic gesture. Hard frost on the way.
Sunday March 25, 2012
Thick fog and silence, punctuated by the low, almost infrasonic throbs of a drumming grouse. The nasal cries of a fish crow pass overhead.
Saturday March 24, 2012
Rain. Two deer in a high-speed chase crash through the laurel, the one in pursuit grunting like a buck gone into rut eight months early.
Friday March 23, 2012
The springhouse phoebe has already found a mate. They take turns fluttering up under the eaves to refurbish the 30-year-old nest.
Thursday March 22, 2012
Wind riffles the wild onion tops sprouting from a crack in the walk. Down at the end of the old corral, the pussy willow’s in bloom.
Wednesday March 21, 2012
Sound is out of the east: a ululating quarry truck, a train whistle that won’t shut up. Clouds thin just where the sun is—a sudden glow.
Tuesday March 20, 2012
The spicebush is a haze of yellow beyond the springhouse. Another too-warm morning. What will be left of spring by warbler time?
Monday March 19, 2012
Myrtle, speedwell, bittercress: my garden is a crashed party of uninvited blooms. But as Orwell noted, spring in general is illicit.
Sunday March 18, 2012
A brown-headed cowbird perches, as always, at the top of the tallest tree in the yard to maximize the reach of his one-second gurgle.