Light snow powdering my black sleeves. I watch a nuthatch inspect each branch of a walnut, its sideways hop and dip when it finds a morsel.
Fog moves back and forth over the snow as the rain thickens. Two hunters emerge, a girl and her grandfather—blaze-orange among the gray.
A slit in the gray clouds widening to reveal the sun, like a sudden eye. Goldfinches feasting in the crown of a birch become silhouettes.
The trees are turning silver and beginning to droop with the weight of freezing rain. A few juncos, undaunted, are bathing in the stream.
Sunlight brightens as the thin clouds move off. Icicles begin to drop from the eaves, their shattering more elegant-sounding than any glass.
Clear, cold and very quiet, expect for bird calls and the trickle of the stream. Since I’m late in rising, a leaf has taken my seat.
A singing contest between white-throated sparrows. Newly fallen oak leaves skitter back and forth on the snow under the trees.
Colder than yesterday, but also brighter. Just as the sun comes out, a snow flurry blows in, silencing a nearby crow.
In my left ear, the sound of traffic going through the gap. In my right, white-throated sparrow, nuthatch, raven, jay. It looks like rain.
A slow, rhythmless dripping from the top roof. The oak leaves scattered across the snow have only melted themselves the shallowest of pits.
Where the stream fans out beside the springhouse, birds hop down the snowbanks and into the water to bathe: sparrows, juncos, Carolina wren.
Truly an autumn snow: eight inches with a topping of fallen oak leaves. In the green and brown lilac, a house finch’s purple breast.
Falling snow infiltrated by sleet—that clicking like a room full of typists. A jay has sole custody of the color blue—his two-note solo.
Two degrees below freezing. The sun is a bright smear in what could be a snow sky. A chickadee sings seemingly to itself.