Sunny and cold. The peony sprouts are at that stage of development where it’s hard not to see them as little red hands—waving, drowning.
Month: April 2020
Sunny and cold. The intense green of the lilac’s new leaves against the brown woods moves me almost to tears. A blue-headed vireo sings.
Intermittent showers after a night of storms. A dead oak leaf stands upright among the daffodils like someone at the wrong party.
Faint sunlight. A gnatcatcher’s nasal notes against the background noise of field sparrows. My mother calls to come look at a dead mole.
Cloudy and cold. Two squirrels excavate nuts a foot apart in the yard, keeping a wary eye on each other. A red-bellied woodpecker trills.
High winds continue. The other white plastic stack chair suddenly turns, slides off the porch and topples into the fresh half-inch of snow.
Curtains of rain blow this way and that. The crack of branch. Bits of gray paper come flying loose from the old hornets’ nest under the eaves.
The silhouette of a small accipiter—doubtless one of the resident Cooper’s hawks—swift and silent as it disappears into the trees.
Overcast. A black vulture drifts back and forth, occasionally flapping its wings—which sets off a squirrel, vigilant against hawks.
Two faded contrails in an otherwise clear sky. A cardinal sings his spring song, which bears a very strong resemblance to his winter song.
Again this morning around 10:30, for the fifth day in a row, a Cooper’s hawk calls up in the woods. In the hawk’s mind, it might be a song.
Overcast and still. The gobbling of a wild turkey up in the field echoes off the ridge—a startling thing to hear once, let alone twice.
Sun silvering black birch twigs. From the woods beyond, the call of a Cooper’s hawk. It can’t be long till the first shadbush blooms.
Birds keep landing on the empty feeder, like kids in a home with an unpaid cable bill staring at the TV. The wind pages through my notebook.