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.
Plummer’s Hollow
Fat snowflakes fall on the daffodils’ down-turned cups, while a towhee chants—according to the time-worn birders’ mnemonic—Drink! Drink!
The sort of rain that makes the world puddle-wonderful. Around the broken old dog statue, the daffodils have drawn their yellow hoop.
Crystal clear sky. Hundreds of daffodil buds look ready to open this afternoon. From up in the woods, a cry like a strangled crow.
Cold and blustery. The kak-kak-kak of a Cooper’s hawk, who comes rocketing out of the woods a second later with a redtail in pursuit.
Rain and the first daffodils: April has come early. Fog appears and disappears among the trees. The robin unspools a silver thread of song.
Sun climbing every tree at once. A hollow snag mutters like a stomach with its cargo of squirrels.
Sunny and warm with high winds, as if March’s proverbial lion and lamb were the same. Trees sway drunkenly. Their dead shed leaves rise up.
Overcast and damp, with woodpecker rattle and squirrel-claw clatter and an exuberant robin duetting with his echo.
Dawn. A phoebe and a cardinal are singing in the rain. At the woods’ edge, the last patch of snow has shrunk to the size of a hubcap.
The last patch of snow is sinking into the earth. A titmouse flits from branch to branch up a walnut sapling, whistling softly to himself.
Sunrise. I watch the trees grow shadows and pelts of sunlight. Anyone rooted can become a gnomon: from the Greek, an expert or interpreter.
A few degrees above freezing on a day forecast to be warm, and the air is already busy with flying things: insects, milkweed down, a phoebe.
Equinox. A cowbird’s liquid note. My breath glows in the sunlight as if from the lungs of some gold buddha.