Another impeccably clear morning with tree leaves looking as if they grew overnight. A hen turkey cluck-cluck-clucks into the woods.
Year: 2022
Sunrise. A squirrel carries a freshly dug-up walnut in its mouth. The tulip tree’s leaves are already big enough to wave like a rave of one.
A wet and shining woods stippled with burst buds. Over the rush of the creek, a cerulean warbler’s buzzy love song to the sky.
After 24 hours of rain, water streams from the mountain’s every pore. The daffodils’ last trumpet points toward the forest.
White lilac blooming in the rain. A hummingbird buzzes my propped-up boots, his crimson gorget the brightest thing in the hollow.
Clear and cool. A blue-winged warbler forages in the crown of the almost-flowering crabapple, his song like the wheeze of an ancient bellows.
A break in the rain. A vole dashes back and forth in the yard. Through the foggy woods, the pale wings of a hawk hunting for breakfast.
Overcast with a soundscape ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous: hermit thrush, tom turkey, a gnat mistaking my ear for a flower.
Sun through thinning fog—prismatic beads of water twinkling from every twig like the souls of dead leaves. It feels almost masochistic to turn my eyes to my book.
After insomnia, watching the rain come in and whatever brightness the morning might’ve had dwindling to just rose-breasted grosbeak song.
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.
Sun through a thin milk of clouds. A lull in birdsong, punctuated by a didactic ovenbird and the rose-breasted grosbeak’s brilliant warble.
Five degrees below freezing. The lilac leaves are already big enough to show their backs to the wind. Four white narcissuses bob and sway.
Cloudy and cold. One of the local redtails is hunting along the woods’ edge, flying from branch to branch, head swiveling all about.