A chipmunk dashes over the snow from one tree melt-hole to another. A downy woodpecker finds a hollow limb that makes him sound enormous.
chipmunks
The whining scold-calls of squirrels, agitation of chipmunks, denunciation of a crow: soundtrack for a gray morning with one white hawk.
Neighboring chipmunks locked in a chipping contest: when one falters, the other pauses, too. The crowns of the oaks slippery with sunlight.
A chipmunk’s steady drip. How many years have I been sitting here? I remember each stage in the lichen’s conquest of the springhouse roof.
The cerulean warbler sounds rushed as always. A chipmunk watches me for ten minutes, stationed like a sentry on the rock next to the porch.
Every time the wind dies, I hear the steady ticking of a chipmunk. A rift opens in the clouds just wide enough for half the sun.
Another gray morning. High against the clouds, a pair of ravens exchange triple croaks. The chipmunk in the garden scratches behind one ear.
Clear, cold, the kind of morning where you can hear for miles, noisy with cars, trucks, trains, jets, and chipmunks standing their ground.
Cool and humid. Up in the woods, two chipmunks start a border dispute, ticking in sync like bombs set to go off at the same moment.
Cold. A chipmunk’s steady tick. When I go back in, a half-dozen cherry petals precede me—random dance steps on the cherry-stained floor.
Behind all the birdsong, I gradually become aware of a metronome I haven’t heard since last fall: a chipmunk clucking up in the woods.
A chipmunk emerges from the base of the stone wall and races over the soft snow. All this rain has brought out the blush in the red maples.