Monday September 21, 2015

Dave Bonta September 21, 2015

The wind is out of the east, and, slight as it is, carries an acrid, chemical smell from the sewage plant and the quarry’s dull roar.

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The fog is a bad magician. Each time it lifts, it reveals the same trees and snow, the same skinny squirrels, the same two crows jeering. …

‪Another too-warm morning: late April without the warblers. Three dried oak leaves launched into flight by the wind circle like doomed hawks.‬ …

Through driving snow, our neighbor is out plowing the road. The plow's hydraulics whine like a sled dog. Tire chains scrabble at the ice. …

Yesterday's snow on every branch? A filigree of drips sparkling in the sun. Periodic crashes from the back of the house as icicles let go. …

Snow falling in large, wet clusters: I watch the woods whiten. Small clouds of powder in a multiflora rosebush as snowbirds dart in and out. …

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. …

Just audible over the wind: a junco's chitter. Leaves lift off from the newly melted forest floor and join a harried flock of snowflakes. …

Late morning, and the gray gives way to deepest blue. Treetops clack like rib-bone castanets, gleaming in the sun. …

Snowflakes make the wind visible. Who knew the yard was home to such complex currents? The anxious calls of a nuthatch on the far shore. …

Cloud-bellies at sunrise: white, yellow, blue-gray, mauve. We're back to cold weather, and only the house finch sounds happy to be alive. …

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