December 2017

December 3, 2017

Dave Bonta December 3, 2017

The forest is still a-flicker with falling leaves—astonishing this late in the year. Distant church bells. A chipmunk’s agitated ticking.

Dave Bonta December 2, 2017

Heavy frost. When the sun strikes it, a faint mist rises from the yard. My father stops the car in the road to say he’s just seen a mink.

Dave Bonta December 1, 2017

The hillside glistens with last night’s rain, fallen leaves cupping thousands of thumbnail-sized puddles too cold for slugs.

February 23, 2024
Foggy at dawn with sound out of the east—the quarry instead of the interstate. Gray-green lichens glow on the rain-darkened trunks of sweet birches all…
February 23, 2023
Mist rises from yesterday’s half inch of icy snow. A robin briefly joins the dawn chorus. The front-garden chipmunk returns from the woods with bulging…
February 23, 2022
Unseasonably warm and overcast. Up in the woods, squirrels nose through leaf duff newly liberated from the snow. A few drops of rain.
February 23, 2021
Overcast at sunrise. The cak-cak-cak of a Cooper’s hawk beginning to think about courtship and nesting, somewhere up in the snowy woods.
February 23, 2020
Squirrel claws scrabbling on bark; song sparrow songs. The sun gleams on the glossy black wings of a vulture skimming the treetops.