Two downy woodpeckers tapping back and forth. The sun almost comes out. Someone is out walking on the crusty snow—the crunch of their boots.
January 2020
January 30, 2020
As slowly as the sky cleared yesterday morning, today it returns to white, like the growing blankness in my memory where some face had been.
January 29, 2020
Quiet save for water gurgling under the yard. Small patches of blue sky slowly merge. The sun comes out to a burst of goldfinch notes.
January 28, 2020
Back from the south to cold air, to old snow sagged and wrinkled. Mingling with traffic noise, the voices of non-migratory geese.
January 23, 2020
Sunrise: a glimpse of yellow from beneath the lid of clouds. Goldfinches flutter down to drink from the stream’s thin fissure of open water.
January 22, 2020
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.
January 20, 2020
Clear and bitter cold (-11°C) but also fabulous—the icy snow covered with glitter where the sun stripes it, blazing through the trees.
January 19, 2020
Watching snowflakes, I start to wonder whether any are making it to the ground at all. Are they just the same flakes circling the house?
January 18, 2020
A lull in the snowfall and the yard is alive with juncos, hopping around each clump of dried grass, gleaning their second breakfast.
January 17, 2020
Clear and cold. As the sun climbs higher, the blue deepens. Yesterday’s thin snow clings to the porch floorboards when I try to sweep.
January 16, 2020
I find my chair where the wind left it at the far end of the porch with a cracked back. Dried cattail leaves flap like banners for the dead.
January 15, 2020
Slow winter dawn: light leaking through the trees. A Carolina wren’s molto vivace prompts his mate to respond in sforzando.
January 14, 2020
Cold and gloomy. A raven alights on a squirrel nest at the top of an oak near the woods’ edge and settles in for a minute before flying on.
January 13, 2020
Quiet except for the distant whine of traffic on I-99 and some small bird chirping behind the oil tanks. The sun comes out for five seconds.