Saturday November 16, 2013

Dave Bonta November 16, 2013

Two squirrels circle warily beside the road. A third crosses the stream with a walnut between its teeth and seeing them, takes to the trees.

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Scattered honks from an unseen traffic of geese above the clouds. It's warm. The mourning doves are finishing each other's sentences. …

Late morning and the rain stops, the fog lifts to reveal the same snow-clad mountain as before. The distant sound of an engine being revved. …

It has stopped raining. The squirrel with pale fur forages at the edge of a small, marooned cloud. The sky brightens and releases more rain. …

‪The usual bird calls—cardinal, titmouse, red-bellied woodpecker—but something seems off. It's the clouds, coming from the wrong direction.‬ …

-21C. With the inner door open, frost forms on the storm door in minutes. The sun through the trees is spiky as a Medieval implement of war. …

Cold and bright. The trees stand in their melted pits, legacy of the recent thaw. I watch the wind shred a fast-moving cloud. …

In the cold wind, a gray fish fights against the lilac twig that snagged it: the collapsed remains of a caterpillar tent fallen from a tree. …

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. …

Winter on this side, winter on the other side, and in between the road's dead grass and gravel. One crow cries, high and shrill. …

A morning for woodpeckers: I hear the trilling of a red-bellied, the cackling of a pileated, and a downy's steady trepanning of a maple. …

Cloudless and cold at sunrise. Two titmice drone back and forth, like a pair of insurance agents at a party trying to out-bore each other. …

Cold, clear, and still. Three dark silhouettes of deer half-running, half-dancing through the laurel with the sun-flooded powerline beyond. …

The Morning Porch