Friday February 08, 2019

Last night’s torrential rain has given way to wind, sunlight shimmering on the flooded stream and the waxy leaves of mountain laurel.

On this date

With crows about, a raven skulks through the pines, talking with its mate in sotto voce rattles. They fly over the porch with labored wingbeats. …

Half-way through a slow snowstorm. The birds seem restless. First a titmouse, then a nuthatch land on the edge of the porch to tell me off. …

Snow fine as fingerprint powder; it's almost zero. Two cardinals and a jay in the crabapple tree wait their turn to drink from the spring. …

A few degrees above freezing; the ground's thin coat of snow already looks mangy. I spot a tiny fly walking purposefully across the porch. …

A patch of dirt laid bare by the snow plow is aswirl with birds of all kinds. Even a robin appears, as if to assess the likelihood of worms. …

A sharp-shinned hawk careens out of the woods, dives for a junco, misses. It lands on a locust limb and ruffles its feathers. …

A red-bellied woodpecker yammers from tree to tree, all around the yard. A builder drives by with nothing in the bed of his truck. …

A squirrel walks slowly through the woods, searching its memory, then stops, digs through the fresh snow and comes up with a nut. …

Dark clouds part in the west, flooding the yard at sunrise with sunset light. A log furred with white fungi glows in the snow-free woods. …

The sleet whose ticking woke me at 6:00 has stopped. Five degrees below freezing. I stick out my arm and hear raindrops hitting my sleeve. …

Wind and water, scattered chirps of winter finches, the sound of two freight trains going through the gap: exactly the music I needed. …

Clear at sunrise. The squeaks of courting squirrels are almost indistinguishable from the squeaks of the trees, rocking in the warm wind. …

It's sleeting: a harsh whisper, nothing but occlusives. After ten minutes of no other sound, a crow calls. Scattered chirps from the feeder. …

The Morning Porch