A downy woodpecker plays a dead locust limb like a marimba, moving rapidly from pitch to pitch, a tremor of red against the blue sky.
Dave Bonta
Right after a mourning dove’s song, a screech owl trills at the very same pitch. The sun floats free of the horizon and into the bluest sky.
The local geese seem restless, flying from valley to valley as if trying to remember how to migrate. Four juncos in the road gathering grit.
A downpour. Just above the ridge, a sudden flash followed by a teeth-rattling rumble, the outline of an inverted tree fading on my retina.
I keep hearing fragments of song—winter wren, bluebird, song sparrow—and the usual tight flock of siskins in a walnut tree going zzzzzzip.