Dawn. Three deer become two, become three again. The sound of squirrel teeth on black walnut shell—that harsh madman’s whisper.
Plummer’s Hollow
Sunrise. The bluebird warbles once, as if unsure whether it really will be that kind of day. The cardinal keeps singing his one good note.
Querulous cries of a raccoon, like lost notes from a soprano clarinet. Two pileateds hammer for their breakfast—an arrhythmic percussion.
First light. The silence is broken by a rustle in the leaves, followed a little later by the hollow sound of a creek stone being flipped.
The sun glints off periwinkle leaves in the yard where snow has just melted. All sounds come from a great distance: crow, woodpecker, train.
Blue sky. The snow has retreated to the northwest-facing hillside under the shelter of the trees. A train’s whistle made wavery by the wind.
Sleet rattles on the roof like a fast typist. Two deer in the springhouse meadow: when they stop moving, they vanish into the brown weeds.
Out before dawn, I hear nothing but the drip of melting snow, gaze at a photographic-negative version of the woods: light ground, black sky.
This morning it’s the titmouse’s turn to sing his spring song—an ode to tedium. I’m grateful when it’s drowned out by a mob of crows.
The wistful two notes of the chickadee’s spring song. The gray clouds begin to turn pink. A rabbit dashes into the lilac when I stand up.
The wind moves snow back and forth across the ground like a restless sculptor. Trees creak and groan: a regular machinery of discontent.
Snow in progress: curtains that fall and fall until they become the show itself. A nuthatch like a prompter—its anxious calls.
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.