A half-grown barn cat crawls out from under the house, gray and bedraggled as a clump of drier lint. One jay rasping at the top of a locust.
November 20, 2009
Cold and quiet, except for the sound of incisors chiseling a bone-hard walnut and the wind hissing through scattered marcescent leaves.
November 19, 2009
Drizzle turns into downpour and the fog retreats up the ridge. An hour later the rain eases and the fog rolls in again, erasing the trees.
November 18, 2009
A red-bellied woodpecker’s head going up and down at the top of a tall locust, squeaking like a red marker on the whiteboard sky.
November 17, 2009
A doe flees the urgent attentions of the resident 6-point, his burp-like grunts. Overhead, the loud cry of a crow chasing a hawk by itself.
November 16, 2009
Silhouetted against the dawn sky, a wedge of geese intersects the treetops’ lace. In the pauses between calls, the hush of wings.
November 15, 2009
After last night’s rain, everything glistens but the four gray forms of deer beneath the lilac, their thin clouds of breath.
November 14, 2009
Halfway up the ridge, a flashlight bobs through the trees, stops, goes out. Then the rustling thuds of hooves in dry leaves. Then silence.
November 13, 2009
The bubbling song of a wren in the half-dark makes it suddenly half-light. From now till blue noon, everything else is a footnote.
November 12, 2009
Wind out of the east, and with it the noise of cars and trucks and trains funneled up the hollow’s half a horn. A smudge of sun.
November 11, 2009
An eight-point buck struts through the neck-high meadow, stirring up sparrows and goldenrod fluff, lifting his tail to shit while he walks.
November 10, 2009
After a warm night, half the lilac’s leaves are brown and curling. What is it about warmth this time of year that makes it so debilitating?
November 9, 2009
A squirrel places a walnut in a small high crotch in the lilac and departs, like the Andrew Goldsworthy of squirrels. A junco lands, looks.
November 8, 2009
Halfway up the ridge, a dangling oak limb broken by last month’s snowstorm suddenly crashes to the ground, still clinging to its leaves.