Time has slowed again with the return of cold weather. The bleeding-hearts in my garden are huddling on half-grown stems.
Dave Bonta
The miniature daffodils around the dog statue have shriveled in the night. Turkeys display at the edge of the field, reversible blooms.
Shirtsleeves at dawn. I rub my eyes at the new blossom-clouds, at green fogs of leaves. It’s too sudden, a premature ejaculation of spring.
Bumblebees joust, and a sun-drugged honeybee wanders the folds of my jeans. Spring’s parade devolves into a mob, everything blooming at once.
Yellow at daybreak: forsythia, daffodils, the spicebush by the springhouse, a flock of goldfinches… what else? The sun crests the ridge.
A hermit thrush lands beside the porch and sings: that eldritch almost-whisper, spirit of the forest. Church bells. A distant chainsaw.
Such a startling and ridiculous sound, the turkey’s gobble—like gargling with marbles. And then a blue-headed vireo’s quiet soliloquy.
Sunrise, and a red-winged blackbird calls twice: sound like a blood-shot sun half-submerged in dark feathers, part trill, part gurgle.
The springhouse phoebe has a mate. He sings from the crabapple while she flutters under the eaves, bill thrusting into the old nest.
Clear, clear, clear: say the same thing often enough, the cardinal knows, and one day you’ll be right. The east is red with maple blossoms.
My dial thermometer’s big red arrow says just above freezing; its shadow says just below. And in the glass, bare trees, clouds flying south.
When the sun finally breaches the fog, the forest drips with jewels. In the yard, the first native wildflower opens its pin-sized blooms.
Overcast and cold. Ten feet up the trunk of the big maple, a fox squirrel drinks sap from a slit the woodpeckers have widened.
The sun blazes through naked trees still six weeks from leaf-out. Three vultures wheel, flapping to stay aloft in the frigid air.