Another cold, clear morning. As the sun moves off the lilac it illuminates a small witch hazel up in the woods—that pale green fire of new life.
April 2022
4/29/2022
Sun through a thin milk of clouds. A lull in birdsong, punctuated by a didactic ovenbird and the rose-breasted grosbeak’s brilliant warble.
4/28/2022
Five degrees below freezing. The lilac leaves are already big enough to show their backs to the wind. Four white narcissuses bob and sway.
4/27/2022
Cloudy and cold. One of the local redtails is hunting along the woods’ edge, flying from branch to branch, head swiveling all about.
4/26/2022
The tulip trees have burst their buds—a gray-green haze. Hermit thrush in my left ear, thunder in my right.
4/25/2022
Sunlight softened by high-altitude haze. The hermit thrush is still around, dreamily singing up on the ridge, ignoring the boorish wren.
4/24/2022
Cool beginning of a day forecast to be hot. The high, thin whistles of waxwings. A fantastically dissonant freight train horn.
4/23/2022
A 30-second rain. I count nine shades of green, all circled by a cardinal in his flame-colored cap. The daffodils once again stand erect.
4/22/2022
Clear at dawn. A pale slice of moon in the treetops, and below, the ethereal song of a hermit thrush.
4/21/2022
Heavily overcast. The patchy yellow of a goldfinch and the spicebush he sits in, grooming his breast feathers.
4/20/2022
Birdcalls echo off an icy snowpack for maybe the last time this spring. Backlit by the sun, the lilac glows intensely green against the snow.
4/19/2022
Gauzy curtains of snow falling from the treetops—six inches’ worth—even as more snowflakes start coming down. The wind’s work is never done.
4/18/2022
White sky slowly disappearing the sun like a pregnant rabbit reabsorbing her litter. Cedar waxwings come whistling down to the stream to drink.
4/17/2022
Looking through a series of thin screens: swirling snowflakes, greening lilac, yellow forsythia, bare trees, holey clouds.