Bright sun on bare trees, whose discarded leaves still glow. Squirrels scold on and on. Finally a hawk-shaped shadow detaches from an oak.
February 2018
2/27/2018
Clear sky. A bluebird warbling up by the barn. High overhead, a pair of ravens fly close together, uttering their most musical croaks.
2/26/2018
Bright sun for the first time in days. The wild rhododendron up in the woods shines like a city of glass seen from an airplane window.
2/25/2018
The rain finally stops. In the woods and yard, chipmunks zip back and forth like hyperactive exoparasites on the mountain’s glistening pelt.
2/24/2018
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.
2/23/2018
The cold rain continues, now misting, now pouring. Beds of moss in the woods begin to look luxurious. Everywhere the sound of running water.
2/22/2018
Steady downpour; almost as much water in the road as in the creek. Scattered, flattened stalks in the rain-dark yard are white with mold.
2/21/2018
Shirt-sleeve weather. A squirrel unearths a walnut from the yard in that casual way squirrels have of pretending it’s doing something else.
2/20/2018
Sun shining through fog. The garden-wall chipmunk must be in heat: two suitors battle for her attention in what’s left of the snow.
2/19/2018
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.
2/18/2018
In the shadows of the treetops, two chipmunks race over and under the three inches of fresh, wet snow. A chickadee sings his spring song.
2/17/2018
The sun burns through high clouds. A gleam in the stream from a clump of sedge where spray has made an ice-fingered claw open to the sky.
2/16/2018
It’s been raining for 15 hours; the creek roars. The snowy ridges the plow made now resemble the mountains I know, orphaned, deeply eroded.
2/15/2018
After a night of rain and unseasonable warmth, the snow cover is threadbare. Moss glows green on the road bank. Waxwings’ silvery whistles.