Quiet except for the distant whine of traffic on I-99 and some small bird chirping behind the oil tanks. The sun comes out for five seconds.
A yellow gash appears in the clouds to the east and heals up again. The cardinal attacks his reflection. Military jets howl over, unseen.
Unseasonably warm. A patchy gray sky. Gliding high above the trees, a vulture, unseasonably far north.
Overcast. A strong smell of sewage from the treatment plant two miles away. Juncos forage in the dead stiltgrass, chirping back and forth.
Cold and still. Mares’ tails running north-south slowly soften into wool. Fresh tire tracks on the road. A crow’s distant note of protest.
The snow squall stops just before I come out all bundled up and squinting at the sun, the porch two inches deep in windblown snow.
Snow. I unfocus my gaze and the flakes become threads, runnels, roots. I remember a dream in which my beard had grown down to the ground.
Sun through trees. Where one squirrel has just raced over the snow another squirrel follows, pausing in the same places. The allure of heat.
Snowflakes in the air give shape to the wind. I sneeze, and a pileated woodpecker emerges from the far side of an oak and flies off.
Sky nearly as gray as the woods. A gray squirrel runs between the trees, and the rain-softened leaf duff makes hardly a sound.
Light rain. Fog forms up on the ridge and drifts down through the trees like a ghost army, loud with the sounds of traffic.
Slow trickle of water in the ditch. Weak sun. My mom stops by to talk about logging and politics, and how the old field is full of sparrows.
Fresh snow melting on the porch roof—a curtain of drips. Chickadees’ cheerful calls are the first thing I hear: a good omen, I think.
A pause in the rain. Under a dripping cedar limb, two filmy-winged winter insects dance side by side, pogoing like airborne punks.