Friday September 20, 2019

Dave Bonta September 20, 2019

The usual parade of jets overhead. On the brown lawn, my partner is painting her climate strike sign green and blue.

Classic January morning: clear sky, very still, very cold. A lone crow's harangue. The furnace stopping in mid-rumble as the power goes out. …

Silent and glittery. Squirrels bound over the icy crust, passing between the trees' long, skinny shadows like loom shuttles. …

The earth is brown again, and the hillside hidden in fog. A one-minute rain shower. Nuthatches chatter. The sun makes a bleary appearance. …

‪The clouds that settled in yesterday haven't lifted, their slow drift barely perceptible through the shifting clarity of the trees.‬ …

Despite the wind, yesterday's snow still clings to the trees, like the sleep I keep trying to rub from my eyes. A wren's ascending rattle. …

Deep cold; nothing stirring but the wind. Clouds of snow blown off the trees are back-lit by the rising sun. …

Bitter cold with a wind. The hillside seems unusually still, and after a while I realize it's because there aren't any squirrels out. …

The dark-eyed juncos flock to the two dark wounds in all this white: the plowed road's bare stone and the thin, quiet trickle of a stream. …

Intense cold, and a stillness so deep the trains can barely be heard. A cardinal flickers like a pilot light under the bridal wreath bush. …

An hour before dawn, whose footsteps are those on the hard crust of snow, first tiptoeing, then running about? Mice, I think. No: sleet. …

Fingers of sunlight stretch across the yard. The resident naturalist climbs the trail into the woods with the aid of a long thin stick. …

Sun thinned by a fleet of clouds the color of dirty dishwater. The wind in the pines is virtually indistinguishable from distant traffic. …

The Morning Porch/Patio