A morning so dark, the spring peepers call between showers. At the wood’s edge, slow as a dream, a blue-headed vireo repeats its only line.
Dave Bonta
Morning full of the cries of woodpeckers—part ululation, part rusty hinge. Like the sounds the trees make in a winter wind, speeded up.
Sun! The gobbling of a turkey on the far side of the field, echoing off the ridge, sounds as if it’s coming from the clear blue sky.
Incessant rain. A chitter of goldfinches halfway through their molt: part green, part yellow, like spicebush or forsythia in reverse.
The red maple blossoms are open at last, puffs of red anthers or orange pollen. A white-throated sparrow sings without stopping in the rain.
The dead cherry beside the porch is greening up, radiant with algae. I take deep lungfuls of actinomycetes spores, that odor of earth.
Fog and the sound of water rushing in the ditches, woodpeckers of every caliber. The thermometer says cold, but somehow the air feels warm.
A squirrel descends an oak at high speed while rolicking robin music plays in the background. Closeup on the maple buds round as stoplights.
Despite the steady rain and continued cold, the first daffodils are out around the dog statue, limp yellow frocks sodden against the ground.
Ten blackbirds fly over without stopping. The soft songs of juncos: are they pining for their north woods? It can’t be long now.
Cold. The fat daffodil buds sag on their stalks. Will this be a year without a spring? Will warblers return to find a sleeping forest?
The porch is sleek with blown rain. Just past dawn I glimpse a small hawk circling low over the trees—long-tailed accipiter, a dark cross.
Kinglets move through the birches. I think of their statelets: hidden expandable nests, clutch that weighs as much as the bird that laid it.
I’m enjoying the stillness: that great word that reminds us that sound too is a form of motion. But the shadows do move. A crow calls.