An old strand of caterpillar silk at the wood’s edge shimmers in the sun. A crow keeps saying something urgent in four syllables.
Out in time for the second sunrise, when the sun clears the near ridge and appears among the trees, an impossible blossom.
Two pairs of pileated woodpeckers breakfast 100 feet apart, one on adjoining oaks and the other side by side on the trunk of a locust.
Thin fog. A yearling fawn play-mounts his mother, and is mounted in turn by his twin. A robin tut-tut-tuts from the driveway.
Frost has silvered the grass where a rabbit grazes, one hop away from a spreading patch of sun. When a crow flies over he flattens his ears.
A small cloud has lodged among the trees at the woods’ edge: shadbush in bloom. Dawn leaks through a dozen rifts in the overcast sky.
At mid-morning, the sky grows dark. Rumbles of thunder over the noise from the interstate. A small, white petal flutters down.
Woodpeckers drumming at sunrise. It occurs to me that they might not be telegraphing “I am here” so much as verifying that the world is.
A cold wind at sunrise. Daffodils nod, while the forsythia shakes its yellow fingers in a vaguely apotropaic gesture. Hard frost on the way.
Thick fog and silence, punctuated by the low, almost infrasonic throbs of a drumming grouse. The nasal cries of a fish crow pass overhead.
Rain. Two deer in a high-speed chase crash through the laurel, the one in pursuit grunting like a buck gone into rut eight months early.
The springhouse phoebe has already found a mate. They take turns fluttering up under the eaves to refurbish the 30-year-old nest.
Wind riffles the wild onion tops sprouting from a crack in the walk. Down at the end of the old corral, the pussy willow’s in bloom.
Sound is out of the east: a ululating quarry truck, a train whistle that won’t shut up. Clouds thin just where the sun is—a sudden glow.