Fresh from their beds, two deer come out of the woods and stand blinking at the new green grass. One scratches her belly with a hind foot.
Plummer’s Hollow
Cool morning of a day forecast to be warm. The sun turns daffodils, red maple blossoms, and the silver fur of the willow into stained glass.
Clear and quiet. Off in the woods, the jagged pine snag gleams yellowish-white, as if in imitation of the lightning bolt that killed it.
Clear, and four degrees below freezing. I watch the sunlight descend a tall tulip poplar and try to block out the sound of morning traffic.
Jurassic silhouettes of wild turkeys against the brown and green field. A cold rain. Maple blossoms glow orange and scarlet in the woods.
A towhee seems stuck in rehearsal: Drink! Drink your… Drink! Everything shines. A white-throated sparrow turns its song upside-down.
The old dog statue in my front yard is now in its glory: a ring of yellow trumpets, silent save for the occasional muffled buzz.
Clear at sunrise, bright orange spreading across the field. One of the daffodil buds in my yard looks ready to open: a broad yellow seam.
Another gray morning. From behind the house, a field sparrow’s ascending note, like a translation of ruffed grouse drumming into song.
Despite appearances to the contrary—the sky still gray, rain still withheld—spring has come for the titmouse and his one, querulous note.
Gray sky; the smell of rain. Two insomniac screech owls exchange trills. Then the low-frequency thumps of a grouse. An enormous silence.
Behind all the birdsong, I gradually become aware of a metronome I haven’t heard since last fall: a chipmunk clucking up in the woods.
Mid-morning: overcast, 36°F, but the wood frogs are making a ruckus in their eyedropper of a pond. Yellow buds swell on the French lilac.
Somewhere in the fog, a red-winged blackbird, a pair of mourning doves, a robin, a flock of finches. Half an hour later, nothing but rain.