Gray sky with a smudge of sun, as bright as the half-out forsythia against the woods. A woodpecker and his echo. The rumble of freight.
April 2, 2024
Rain. Every ditch runs with whitewater. Behind the bright forsythia, a gray wall of fog swallows the trees. Nevertheless, a wren.
April 2, 2022
Clouds that looked dark before sunrise are mottled with blue-gray and yellow. Woodpecker blast beats. Wrenish riffs.
April 2, 2021
Bitter wind. Up in the woods, sun glints off an old jar the frost heaved up. When I go to fetch it, ice colonnades crumble under my boots.
April 2, 2020
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.
April 2, 2019
Neither hot nor cold, and the sun’s neither out nor in. The daffodil spears look just a little taller, and the moss maybe a bit more bright.
April 2, 2018
Five inches of wet snow like an April Fool’s prank that came a few hours late. The juncos at the bird feeder can twitter about nothing else.
April 2, 2017
The sun fades as the sky turns paler blue. I close my eyes to listen to the creekâafter rain, like a room full of whispered conversations.
April 2, 2016
Sunny and cool. A small brown moth flies past, fluttering hard against the wind. From the interstate to the west, the whine of a speed bike.
April 2, 2015
Sunny and warm. A rabbit emerges from its burrow to graze on dead grass. Chickadees singing “fee-bee” are interrupted by an actual phoebe.
April 2, 2014
A pair of phoebes fly in and out of the old nest under the springhouse eaves. Done foraging, a groundhog barrels full-tilt toward its den.
April 2, 2013
In contrast to the clouds, the snowbank beside the driveway is shrunken and gray, like something left too long at the back of the fridge.
April 2, 2012
Out in time for the second sunrise, when the sun clears the near ridge and appears among the trees, an impossible blossom.
April 2, 2011
A mourning dove skimming the treetops flies off toward the northeast, the whistle of its wingbeats like something from the age of steam.