With the leaves down I can see not only farther, but deeper: through a maze of lilac branches, I spot a rabbit when its dark eye blinks.
Crows and ravens squabble over deer gut-piles in the woods. Dirt flies at the woods’ edge as a groundhog enlarges the entrance to its den.
The sound of an altercation among the goldfinches—like a dozen jazz soloists playing at once. The only cloud in the sky finds the sun.
Every branch and twig is white with rime, and overhead, a latticework of contrails. Three crows skim the treetops on their way to a mobbing.
Cold at sunrise. A squirrel gathers clumps of dry leaves from the last oak to still have them and stuffs them into the top of a hollow snag.
Chickadee and nuthatch alarms are ringing over something in the tall weeds. A squirrel pauses beside the porch to scratch its ear.
A rabbit wanders back and forth in the half-light of dawn—a nervous eater, hunched around its hunger. When it freezes, it almost disappears.
Dawn light turns everything briefly to gold: house, trees, the three deer that run a short way into the woods and stop, nostrils flaring.
The clouds part just above the horizon, where a weak sun glimmers like a bonfire among the skeletal trees. Distant shots ring out.
Dawn gives a rust-red belly to the clouds. Over the stream, I’m astonished to hear the ethereal notes of a hermit thrush song.
Another warm morning. A Carolina wren pops out of the bridal wreath bush like a rabbit from a magician’s hat and ascends the lilac, singing.
The heavy frost melts quickly, even before the sunlight reaches it: the grass glistens. I am thinking for some reason about paperless books.
The ground is still saturated from Tuesday’s rain. Through the hole in my yard, the sound of the underground stream’s insurgent song.
A pile of fresh dirt at the woods’ edge: a groundhog has dug a den under the roots of a poison ivy-throttled maple. Will he itch all winter?