The mayapples next to the creek have opened their umbrellas. We do need rain. Already, the top branches of the crabapple have caught fire.
Squirrels grapple on a skinny branch 20 feet up. One falls to the ground with a loud plop and races off, sun shining through its tail.
Thick ground fog, one degree below freezing. The trees grow sharper as the sun begins to blur. Please don’t flower yet, I tell the oaks.
At 8:02 a patter of rain too brief to even darken the sidewalk. Nuthatch, field sparrow. A crow bleats like a lamb with a hand on its neck.
The Cooper’s hawk swoops down from the woods’ edge into the ditch and dips his beak again and again in its cold clear blood.
A groundhog among the daffodils rears up on its haunches like the very large squirrel that it is. A tiger swallowtail careens past.
Drifts of white on the springhouse roof: not fallen blossoms, but last night’s pellet snow. Tree creaks join the dawn chorus.
Time has slowed again with the return of cold weather. The bleeding-hearts in my garden are huddling on half-grown stems.
The miniature daffodils around the dog statue have shriveled in the night. Turkeys display at the edge of the field, reversible blooms.
Shirtsleeves at dawn. I rub my eyes at the new blossom-clouds, at green fogs of leaves. It’s too sudden, a premature ejaculation of spring.
Bumblebees joust, and a sun-drugged honeybee wanders the folds of my jeans. Spring’s parade devolves into a mob, everything blooming at once.
Yellow at daybreak: forsythia, daffodils, the spicebush by the springhouse, a flock of goldfinches… what else? The sun crests the ridge.
A hermit thrush lands beside the porch and sings: that eldritch almost-whisper, spirit of the forest. Church bells. A distant chainsaw.
Such a startling and ridiculous sound, the turkey’s gobble—like gargling with marbles. And then a blue-headed vireo’s quiet soliloquy.