Snow in progress: curtains that fall and fall until they become the show itself. A nuthatch like a prompter—its anxious calls.
Plummer’s Hollow
This snow makes it so much easier to keep track of squirrels, their mad chases on the ground, through the trees—showers of white dust.
A branch breaks at the top of an oak, clatters through the too-loose grips of lower limbs and lands in the new snow’s too-shallow grave.
Flat white sky and a long, low rip of sound: some military jet. The first flakes drift back and forth, as if unsure of their destination.
The deep, soulful croak of a raven high above the ridge, side by side with its mate, heading east. Far behind them, a rabble of crows.
Another cloudless morning, marred only by the high whine of traffic. My neighbor calls with news of a bald eagle on the carcass of a deer.
A thousand blemishes sparkle on the side of the white porch column perpendicular to the sun. A red-bellied woodpecker trills and trills.
A wool-gray sky. This is not the blue morning we were promised! But tell it to the bluebirds warbling above the garage.
Is it overcast or sunny, warm or cold? I don’t even notice. The line crew is back, and they’ve chainsawed the top off a dwarf pear tree.
Loggers clearing trees along the powerline: chainsaws scream, then drop to a low growl. The soft thump of a tree hitting the ground.
Dark clouds part in the west, flooding the yard at sunrise with sunset light. A log furred with white fungi glows in the snow-free woods.
Walnut tree branches behind the house rock by turns, as if from the passage of some large animal, but it’s only this warm-blooded wind.
Where the fresh snow has just melted on the concrete walkway, a bright green blush of lichen. The nuthatch’s three nasal notes.
This could be March, were it not for the late, slow-rising sun. The powerline right-of-way is a band of yellow light through the dark woods.