High winds. The tall cherry stump beside the porch has finally toppled, lying on the ground with all its small holes like a cartoon monster.
Year: 2017
Cold rain thickens into a downpour. A Cooper’s hawk lands in the top of a tall locust and sits preening and shaking, as if taking a shower.
Cold and quiet. An argument between nuthatches is picked up and amplified by a pileated woodpecker. The old dog farts in a patch of sun.
Glimpses of a large, dark animal running way off through the woods, its footsteps inaudible over the wind. Great flocks of leaves.
The sun stretches one stripe of dazzle across the frosted yard. A chickadee hangs from a goldenrod seed head, fossicking through the fluff.
The sound of chainsaws from over the ridge. A chipmunk races up the big tulip poplar and returns to earth along the first, hung-down limb.
Raindrops grow farther and farther apart until there are none. Three squirrels screech in counterpoint, a preaching choir of fear.
Cold and quiet but for the stream’s gurgle. Bare limbs are pale in the half-strength sun, as if they’d all been barked clean by a porcupine.
Bright sun, heavy frost. Down in the hollow, a screech owl calls as persistently as if it were midnight. I take deep breaths of the icy air.
Among the leaves scudding past the porch, a stray snowflake. A blue seam opens in the clouds to the west where a raven is calling.
Cloudy and cold. The quiet tapping of a downy woodpecker. A deer hunter appears, his bloody quarry sliding behind him on the fallen leaves.
Yesterday’s snow lingers in the shadows and drips and slides from the leaves, filling the treetops with rustling. Vultures spiral overhead.
Mid-morning and the yard is seething with birds—chickadees, sparrows, juncos, nuthatches, titmice—foraging and singing despite the sleet.
Rainy and warm. A paper wasp walks unsteadily back and forth on the bottom railing. Squirrels keep scolding some long-gone predator.