A yellow gash appears in the clouds to the east and heals up again. The cardinal attacks his reflection. Military jets howl over, unseen.
2020
1/11/2020
Unseasonably warm. A patchy gray sky. Gliding high above the trees, a vulture, unseasonably far north.
1/10/2020
Overcast. A strong smell of sewage from the treatment plant two miles away. Juncos forage in the dead stiltgrass, chirping back and forth.
1/9/2020
Cold and still. Mares’ tails running north-south slowly soften into wool. Fresh tire tracks on the road. A crow’s distant note of protest.
1/8/2020
The snow squall stops just before I come out all bundled up and squinting at the sun, the porch two inches deep in windblown snow.
1/7/2020
Snow. I unfocus my gaze and the flakes become threads, runnels, roots. I remember a dream in which my beard had grown down to the ground.
1/6/2020
Sun through trees. Where one squirrel has just raced over the snow another squirrel follows, pausing in the same places. The allure of heat.
1/5/2020
Snowflakes in the air give shape to the wind. I sneeze, and a pileated woodpecker emerges from the far side of an oak and flies off.
1/4/2020
Sky nearly as gray as the woods. A gray squirrel runs between the trees, and the rain-softened leaf duff makes hardly a sound.
1/3/2020
Light rain. Fog forms up on the ridge and drifts down through the trees like a ghost army, loud with the sounds of traffic.
1/2/2020
Slow trickle of water in the ditch. Weak sun. My mom stops by to talk about logging and politics, and how the old field is full of sparrows.
1/1/2020
Fresh snow melting on the porch roof—a curtain of drips. Chickadees’ cheerful calls are the first thing I hear: a good omen, I think.