There must be open water in the ditch: jay- and sparrow-shaped silhouettes are going up and down the dogwood’s laddered branches.
Plummer’s Hollow
Sky and ground are the same flat white. I hear my mother at her bird feeder yelling Go! Go! Go! Go! as a squirrel bounds over the icy crust.
Dim sun. Trunks and branches still sheathed in ice glisten, surrounded by duller companions like glitterati on the streets of New York.
A thin snowdrift has taken refuge on the porch, covering all but the outermost foot. My old broom sheds pieces of straw with every pass.
The rain has stopped; the forest cracks and crashes. Fallen branches ring the dead cherry, each bearing a row of broken teeth.
The sleet whose ticking woke me at 6:00 has stopped. Five degrees below freezing. I stick out my arm and hear raindrops hitting my sleeve.
Thickening contrails stripe the sky. Two ravens fly side-by-side over the house, trading hoarse commentary. The blur of hoarfrost.
A titmouse lands in the dead cherry tree, reaches into the cracked bark, pulls out a sunflower seed and taps it open, pausing twice to sing.
It’s snowing again. A blue jay keeps returning to the same high limb to eat snow, as if it can’t find that exact flavor anywhere else.
The silence of falling snow. When my furnace kicks on, the three deer digging under the wild apple tree startle and run down the slope.
A large white bird—albino crow? Lost seagull?—glimpsed through the snow, agglomerated flakes as big as small leaves, rocking and spinning.
A distant quarry truck’s reverse beeper has gone bad, and trills just like a digital alarm clock. Dueling chickadees tumble through the air.
Low clouds, and the highway—almost inaudible for weeks—sounds close. The air shimmers. I stick an arm out, and white motes dot my sleeve.
The ugly squat burdock has a thin and graceful shadow. It inches over the snow without getting snagged by the sharp sparkles of sun.