Snow falling faster than it can melt. Unto every one that hath shall be given, says the sky: hawthorn and bridal wreath now twice as white.
Plummer’s Hollow
Church bells from town swell and fade as the wind eddies—some old hymn on the carillon. A black-and-white warbler’s breathy two-note call.
A metallic green jumping spider, moving slowly in the morning cool, climbs from my green shirt sleeve to the green spine of my book.
A half-grown rabbit emerges from the rosebush and pauses in the middle of the blue driveway to shake its head and scratch behind its ears.
The green blush deepens on the hillside; shining motes of pollen speckle my laptop screen. A crow flaps up from the black currant bushes.
The white sky’s bright wound slowly scabs over. A groundhog’s head emerges from the hole under the bedroom, its eyes as bottomless as wells.
Cool and overcast. The soft thump of a bird side-swiping a window. An ant walks with exquisite slowness up the side of the house.
Dawn, and the peepers are still calling. The bridal-wreath bush glows brighter than the thin grin of a moon rising through the trees.
Breezy and cool. Small white moths—or are they flower petals?—flutter against the grey sky. A field sparrow’s ascending notes.
Half molted now, a patchwork of yellow and green, the goldfinch goes twittering past the crabapple’s half-open blooms.
Up in the woods, one witch hazel has already leafed out—a green flame. The rumble of a pickup approaching then failing to appear.
A bright blue morning. It takes the drone of a plane to draw my attention to a new bird call: the first blue-headed vireo of the year.
The Carolina wren goes from querulous chirps to full-throated denunciations from the top of the dead cherry tree. But the snow continues.
Cold, gray and windy. The peony sprouts, up early this year, are still at the point of just untwisting their skinny red fists.