Quiet at mid-morning. The sun’s a faint smudge. I hear a caroling from inside the house: a friend calling to tell me it’s snowing there.

Freezing rain. A black birch sapling suddenly bows its head. As the temperature climbs, branches begin to shed their heavy decorations.

Cold, gray, and windy, with a new half-inch of snow. The only flicker of warmth is a chickadee’s call—the pilot light in a stone-cold oven.

Four chickadees glean frozen bugs from one skinny branch of the dead elm. Through newly porous trees, a 30-second glimpse of the rising sun.

Sun behind the trees. A chickadee singing its “charee-charup” song—or so it sounds to me, whole layers of meaning hidden from primate ears.

Cold and windy. A chickadee’s two-note spring song echoes off the ridge. Behind the trees, floating above the horizon, one yellow cloud.