Faint traces of high cloud give a seaside sort of light. I dreamed the wood frogs were calling, but it’s still too cold.
March 2018
March 16, 2018
Each morning arrives with a fresh coat of snow, but today’s is threadbare. For a minute or two, the wind is whiter than the ground.
March 15, 2018
A slightly warmer morning than yesterday, with fatter snowflakes floating across a bleary sun. The red-bellied woodpecker trills and trills.
March 14, 2018
Small flakes sting my cheek; ice-bound trees squeak and groan. From the feeder up at my parents’ house, the happy chatter of snowbirds.
March 13, 2018
Had I not risen early I would’ve missed the sun, the rooster, two doves’ calls blending into something like the distant locomotive’s chord.
March 12, 2018
Cold and gloomy, but the yard seethes with birds: juncos, cardinals, wren. A hundred yards away, a hawk sits on a limb, bedeviled by crows.
March 11, 2018
An achingly blue sky, and the sun lower than it should be thanks to the tyranny of clocks. Crows yell. The ground sparkles with frost.
March 10, 2018
All the birds are calling and then they’re not. I’m remembering a big oak that stood at the woods’ edge when I was a kid—no trace of it now.
March 9, 2018
New snow blown about by a bitter wind. A red-tailed hawk struggles to gain altitude, mocked by a blue jay doing its best hawk scream.
March 8, 2018
Sunny and cool. Above the steady tapping of meltwater from the top roof, the nearly constant calling or singing of chickadees.
March 7, 2018
Pileated woodpecker drumming in a snowstorm—so loud, so outrageously red—here and gone. While the wet, methodical snow doesn’t miss a twig.
March 6, 2018
A raven croaks and I see the sun moving backwards—just a sun-sized pit in the clouds glowing as it passes the location of the actual sun.
March 5, 2018
Another wintry morning, and I’m marveling at the sharpness of the air in my lungs, the sun in my face, the blue sky, the cardinal’s song.
March 4, 2018
The thermometer’s arrow nudges past 32 in the sun, but the wind’s still cold, and the damp soil at the woods’ edge glitters with needle ice.