Saturday August 16, 2014

Dave Bonta August 16, 2014

A scattering of white in my overgrown garden: soapwort, bindweed, fleabane, snakeroot. The sky brightens. A towhee calls from the lilac.

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The ground is white again, and the shape of the wind sketched out by flying flakes. A tree sparrow sings, homesick perhaps for the tundra. …

As if in answer to the stream's soprano babble, the bugling of migrant geese, their V breaking and rewriting itself as they pass overhead. …

Clear sky. A bluebird warbling up by the barn. High overhead, a pair of ravens fly close together, uttering their most musical croaks. …

Cold and still, with a bright smudge of sun. A white-throated sparrow joins a junco in the dried stiltgrass, burrowing into it like a vole. …

The snowpack glitters, and the air too: flakes almost as small as dust-motes float back and forth in the sun. The rumbling of a bulldozer. …

Most of the mountain is still sealed under five inches of icy snowpack, but the wind goes down the plowed road, turning over all the leaves. …

The snow that began falling at 6:00 has softened to slush; the skunk prints that crossed the garden are gone. Fog fills the woods. …

A downy woodpecker gleans breakfast from the dead cherry, chirping between taps. A mackerel sky. The smell of thawed earth. …

Three stalks of garlic in the yard have kept their heads throughout this long winter, seasoning the snows. The distant fluting of geese. …

The high winds have stopped, but who knows how much snow has fallen? An apple core tossed into the yard for the deer disappears with a thud. …

A downpour. Just above the ridge, a sudden flash followed by a teeth-rattling rumble, the outline of an inverted tree fading on my retina. …

Fire engines wailing through the gap, air horns, the frantic melisma of ambulances. The wind blows snow against my cheek—pinpricks of cold. …

The Morning Porch