Plummer’s Hollow

Warm and windy. I’ve been staring at the same dim star for five minutes now. The roaring on the ridge drowns out every other sound.

1°F. A breeze feels as sharp as the studded rim of the sun rising through the trees. The call of a cardinal like an engine trying to start.

At first light, some large animal crunching through the snowpack at the woods’ edge. It slows, stops. I wait for daybreak: nothing there.

At half-light, small explosions of wings and twittering from around the side of the house as birds leave their roosts in the cedar tree.

Tracks left yesterday morning have grown blurry and distended. Every weed and grass stem is a bull’s-eye at the center of a pit.

In the pre-dawn darkness, the wall of trees is in motion, like a silent waterfall. I’m either having an acid flashback, or it’s snowing.

Like sand in an hourglass this pellet snow. Three craters in the yard—grass, leaves—from something that’s trying to turn back the clock.

The promised snowstorm has yet to arrive. The air is dead still, and an hour after daybreak, the ground remains lighter than the sky.