Sun through a scrim of cirrus. The hillside ticks with chipmunks. Two white-breasted nuthatches call back and forth at the woods’ edge.
chipmunks
Crystal-clear and cool at mid-morning, the Sunday silence only broken by a chipmunk’s metronome and the distant rumble of a train. In a patch of sun, a cricket picks up where he left off.
Rain. The stone-wall chipmunk races across the yard and disappears into the woods. The rattle of my metal roofs drowns out everything but a train horn.
Bitter cold and overcast. After a bit of belly-grooming, the stone-wall chipmunk races across the yard to forage under the lilac, only to be chased off by another chipmunk. She returns to her spot atop the wall and sits motionless, staring off into space.
A fresh dusting of snow: winter’s not done with us yet. But the chipmunk who lives in the stone wall next to the porch is up, poking around under the lilac, racing across the yard.
Clear and still. A chipmunk chips from her hole in the rock wall beside the porch, getting a much more resonant sound than her rival up in the woods.
Another cool, clear, still morning. The bang of a walnut on a metal roof. A chipmunk’s metronome.
Another cool morning. The chipmunk who lives under the lilac races across the road, tail like the upright stem on a quarter note. The peonies’ pale fists are opening, one by one.
Steady rain. A gnatcatcher flutters to find breakfast on the undersides of leaves, then retreats to the shelter of the lilac to shake the water off. A chipmunk runs under my chair to eat one seed at the far end of the porch.
Cool and increasingly cloudy as the sun clears the treetops—a bright spot in the gray. A rose-breasted grosbeak sings. Chipmunk metronomes go in and out of sync.
Cold and still at sunrise. A chipmunk pops up from under the house and scuttles over to the stone wall, where it stops to watch the clouds turn colors.
Overcast and quiet except for the watery chorus. A chipmunk dashes across a patch of snow and disappears under the house.
A flat white sky crossed by a crow. Woods’-edge chipmunks in a chipping contest. The color.
Six degrees above freezing and clear at sunrise. The spicebushes next to the road are at their most luminous yellow. Chipmunks tick like asynchronous clocks.