The nasal call of a jay became the soundtrack of happiness one sun-drenched afternoon of my childhood. The place is gone now—a subdivision.
Plummer’s Hollow
Fresh excavations in the yard—a puzzle. Have the deer developed a taste for myrtle, the green of its leathery leaves under all that snow?
Late morning, and the gray gives way to deepest blue. Treetops clack like rib-bone castanets, gleaming in the sun.
The dog statue in the yard is still buried except for its vigilant tail. On either side, the excavations of deer.
I strain to hear the waking birds, but sound is out of the west: cars, trucks, winter tires—the fossil-fueled Fat Tuesday that never ends.
Fine powder on the wind. The locust tree at the woods’ edge is suddenly full of creaks, like a lapsed Trappist relearning how to talk.
Bright midmorning. Among the shadows in my yard, one patch of light that’s almost barren of sparkles: reflection from a second-story window.
Gray mid-morning, and the sound of bells comes and goes on the wind. A downy woodpecker telegraphs his hunger from a limb of the big maple.
My eyes water from lack of sleep, and the sun too looks bleary, shining through clouds. A sudden loud sigh from the vicinity of the pines.
A silent ordnance drifting on the wind crumbles on impact against my legs. I suddenly realize I haven’t heard a Carolina wren in weeks.
Foot-deep drifts across the porch, and the western ridge is plastered white. Above the snow-banshees, I hear blue jays calling.
Wind-whipped snow. I imagine a pep-talk in the cloud nursery: You’re a star! You’re unique! And no mention of gray mounds in a parking lot.
The soft trills of a screech owl an hour before dawn. I sip my coffee as quietly as I can.
It’s one of those perfect winter mornings from my childhood: bright sun on deep snow and even the shadows sparkling as I shake my head.