To the northeast, seven parallel contrails spread and merge. An eighth appears through the treetops across the yard, and I have to sneeze.
A broken-off locust limb held at a 45-degree angle by the black birches’ intricate crowns is thick enough to still wear a coat of snow.
With the temperature in the low 20s, the few clouds have that filmy, snow-filled look. Otherwise, a deep blue scribbled with white branches.
Steady sift of snow whitening every twig. But my eye is drawn to the one small patch of lawn grass left in the yard, those brave green tips.
A squirrel foraging in the leaves suddenly streaks for the nearest tree, barely escaping the sharp-shinned hawk hurtling through the forest.
Trees rock and sway. The dead elm has parted with its largest limb, and the oblong scar glows a creamy yellow, like a well-aged cheese.
Cold, gray morning. I inventory the remaining spots of green: moss, grass, mountain laurel, pine, a rosette of thistle outlined in frost.
A small band of clear sky in the west, persisting for over an hour, gives the woods and meadow a feverish glow. The sound of the wind.
The opening day of rifle season. Deer run back and forth through the laurel—each shift of the wind must bring a different human’s stink.
Soft-focus shadows from the high, thin clouds. Chickadees are calling chirree-chirrup, a car door slams, a crow goes yelling into the sun.
The female cardinal—a being guaranteed to unsettle conservative Catholics—answers her mate’s anxious chirps, crest bent back by the wind.
A tulip poplar key helicopters past the porch, shook loose by a squirrel at the edge of the woods rummaging among the spikey cups of seeds.
As if giving thanks, the thin, wavering call of a white-throated sparrow. The dawn sky half-cloud, half-clear. A distant owl.
Damp and overcast, but every bird on the mountain seems to be passing through my yard, wings flashing like old coins, like wooden nickels.