Christmas—the quietest morning of the year. The stream is a full chorus. A pileated woodpecker flaps overhead, cheering itself on.
Plummer’s Hollow
12/24/2007
Cold and windy. A chickadee’s two-note spring song echoes off the ridge. Behind the trees, floating above the horizon, one yellow cloud.
12/23/2007
Thick fog at dawn, gray against the snow. Slate-colored juncos call back and forth: Where are you? A wind comes up.
12/22/2007
Yakety-yak on the porch, dee dee dee in the birches, and everywhere a drip drip drip drip drip: gray solstice morning.
12/21/2007
The sun behind a wash of cirrus seems almost approachable: a bonfire, the eye of a wolf. All the small birds of winter calling at once.
12/20/2007
Distant sound of a rasp on wood: the porcupine’s last meal of the night. In the springhouse lawn, the silhouette of a cat taking a shit.
12/19/2007
With the ground white, squirrels are visible hundreds of feet up in the woods. And when I shut my eyes, the trees reappear on my eyelids.
12/18/2007
Blue sky carved up by the ley lines of industrial man. Who else leaves such arrow-strait trails for mile after mile? Only Coyote.
12/17/2007
Fresh snow curls in a graceful wave behind each tire of the first car to go down the driveway. Minutes later, the whine of a car in reverse.
12/16/2007
A lull in the storm, and it’s quiet—no sound of trucks or trains, no Sunday drivers. Squirrel scold-calls echo off the ice.
12/15/2007
The sun peeks out for half a minute from under a lid of clouds. The downy woodpecker finds a resonant bone of locust and rattles it hard.
12/14/2007
Riddle me this: no snow fell here, but the ground is white. The trees with their thin coats of ice creak and clatter in the darkness.
12/13/2007
Tickticktick—sleet slipping through the forest’s net of twigs. Grains with no hourglass, a rush order for all who dream of the beach.
12/12/2007
Last night, I watched a meteor blaze across a hole in the white clouds. This morning, a full palette of grays. The local star peeks through.