Flurries. The chittering call of a Cooper’s hawk; the small birds continue feeding. A strangled cry. Finally, the jay calls like a jay.
Plummer’s Hollow
Sun mediated by a thin wash of cloud lays soft stripes of light atop the snow, as if the air were full of pollen, as if it were August.
Bitter cold at sunrise. A distant F-16: that high, harsh sound of something being torn. A few small clouds hurry off toward the sun.
Dawn: a thin band of vivid pink. I glance down at my coffee, and when I look back it’s gone, the sky’s gray. A titmouse’s monotonous song.
Last night’s wet snow sticks here and there—blank spaces on the wind’s map. One of the 50-odd bergamot heads still wears a toque blanche.
A squirrel tunnels into the icy snow. I hear my neighbor walking to his truck a quarter mile away. Inside, all the clocks are blinking.
There must be open water in the ditch: jay- and sparrow-shaped silhouettes are going up and down the dogwood’s laddered branches.
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.