Patches of frost in the yard. A yellow jacket from the underground nest in the garden lands on the shoulder of my sunlit coat.
Sunny and cold. The soft whistles of white-throated sparrows are slowly subsumed by the hundred voices of an approaching bulldozer.
Unlike last night’s full moon, even this dim smudge of a sun is painful to look at. The sound of rodent teeth chiseling a black walnut.
Windy and cold. A downy woodpecker works over the dead cherry, sounding like a fast hunt-and-peck typist. A towhee calls from the lilac.
Weak sun. The meadow seems haunted by strange winds, seedy goldenrod heads bowing and swaying as flocks of sparrows move through.
The trees seethe with the small birds of winter. Even the cherry stump beside the porch attracts a nuthatch’s thorough investigation.
White shapes appear and disappear in the pre-dawn darkness: nervous deer raising and lowering their tails.
The fluting of geese from somewhere above the clouds. A bowhunter dressed in green camouflage walks out of the autumn woods.
Mist thickens into drizzle; the phoebe falls silent. Under the deer-ravaged black currant bushes, slick black rocks where the stream begins.
Several bright spots in the clouds where the sun might be hiding like a pea in a shell game. Dozens of crows fly overhead, most in silence.
The all-night rain has stripped the leaves off the witch hazel, revealing the flowers, some clutching raindrops in their pale skinny petals.
A muffled explosion from the east: more dynamiting of the valley’s limestone. The sparrows in the lilac act like nothing happened.
The air is hazy but cool. Asian ladybugs fly back and forth, orange elytra aglow. A jay forages in the leaf duff, bluer than the sky.
Clear and cold. The leaves at the end of the porch have gathered into a dense crowd, as if for warmth. A raven’s distant croak.