Cold and still, with a bright smudge of sun. A white-throated sparrow joins a junco in the dried stiltgrass, burrowing into it like a vole.
Plummer’s Hollow
Cold weather has finally returned. Small birds are bathing in the stream despite the iron wind, shaking themselves dry in a dogwood bush.
Two song sparrows in a singing contest under dark clouds. I try to hear urgency and seriousness in their bubbly notes as the sky opens up.
The usual bird calls—cardinal, titmouse, red-bellied woodpecker—but something seems off. It’s the clouds, coming from the wrong direction.
So many chipmunks are racing about at the woods’ edge that after watching them for a while, I begin to feel itchy. A crow clears its throat.
Warm and still. Out of the corner of my eye, a pileated woodpecker slipping behind a tree. Distant howl of a train car’s misaligned wheels.
Weak sunlight. Dead leaves are all a-rustle, rummaged through by squirrels, voles, chipmunks, juncos. The distant cry of a maybe killdeer.
Cloudless and still. Sun gleams on the laurel under the trees. I hear the crunch of footsteps on the gravel road from a hundred yards away.
Another too-warm morning: late April without the warblers. Three dried oak leaves launched into flight by the wind circle like doomed hawks.
Unseasonably warm. The sun catches on glass disinterred by frost heaving. From the valley, the cheerful pops of a semi-automatic rifle.
Bright sun, deep blue sky. A Canada goose flying over the mountain all by itself honks anyway. A small spider runs across my coat.
Bitter blasts of wind, lightly seasoned with snow. One of the trees at the woods’ edge has acquired a loud creak, but I can’t tell which.
A dusting of snow that fell while I was taking a shower has vanished again. Fast-moving clouds. On the wind, a train horn’s skewed chord.
I bask in the sun, listening to the creek’s borborygmi. In my last dream before waking, it had grown huge and thunderous as an angry god.