Thick fog at dawn, gray against the snow. Slate-colored juncos call back and forth: Where are you? A wind comes up.
Dave Bonta
Yakety-yak on the porch, dee dee dee in the birches, and everywhere a drip drip drip drip drip: gray solstice morning.
The sun behind a wash of cirrus seems almost approachable: a bonfire, the eye of a wolf. All the small birds of winter calling at once.
Distant sound of a rasp on wood: the porcupine’s last meal of the night. In the springhouse lawn, the silhouette of a cat taking a shit.
With the ground white, squirrels are visible hundreds of feet up in the woods. And when I shut my eyes, the trees reappear on my eyelids.
Blue sky carved up by the ley lines of industrial man. Who else leaves such arrow-strait trails for mile after mile? Only Coyote.
Fresh snow curls in a graceful wave behind each tire of the first car to go down the driveway. Minutes later, the whine of a car in reverse.
A lull in the storm, and it’s quiet—no sound of trucks or trains, no Sunday drivers. Squirrel scold-calls echo off the ice.
The sun peeks out for half a minute from under a lid of clouds. The downy woodpecker finds a resonant bone of locust and rattles it hard.
Riddle me this: no snow fell here, but the ground is white. The trees with their thin coats of ice creak and clatter in the darkness.
Tickticktick—sleet slipping through the forest’s net of twigs. Grains with no hourglass, a rush order for all who dream of the beach.
Last night, I watched a meteor blaze across a hole in the white clouds. This morning, a full palette of grays. The local star peeks through.
Another cold and misty morning. The last of the snow is gone from the hillside. Pressed flat, the leaf litter still glows faintly red.
The cooing turned out to be a raven—later on, it was barking like a dog. Rifle season is over, and the mountain is littered with gut piles.