Impossible to distinguish the sound of the ridgetop wind from the rumble of freight trains below. The stars fade. A small high cloud turns pink.
clouds
February 15, 2024
Very cold and still. The clear sky at dawn has gone white. Crows call to crows. The floorboards shiver when my furnace kicks on.
February 13, 2024
A filigreed fretwork of wet snow clinging to everything. From the valley, the wail of sirens. The cloud cover thins to a kind of brightness.
February 11, 2024
Very still under a bone-white sky. A Carolina wren rummages under the house. In the treetops a gray squirrel takes an improbable leap.
February 10, 2024
Unseasonably warm and very quiet. Sunrise appears through a rift in the clouds: gold in the east, black in the west. The last five piles of icy snow look as out of place as alien spacecrafts.
February 8, 2024
Dawn clouds stacked liked a ladder of blood. Chattering nuthatches. A dove’s breathy song sounds far from mournful.
February 2, 2024
It’s the last overcast dawn for days, they say, so I try to find something to savor in the cold gloom, among the rumbles of distant machines and the one-note whistles of dove wings.
February 1, 2024
Just past sunrise the sky almost clears, then clouds over again. The thermometer’s black arrow points straight at 32. The mound of plowed slow at the edge of the yard looks lost and abandoned, like Lot’s wife after she glanced back.
January 23, 2024
As below, so above, the trees marooned in a flat whiteness no less absolute than that of a blank page, albeit one navigated by squirrels.
January 13, 2024
After a night of snow and rain, trees rock and clatter under orange clouds. The roof drips. Scattered flakes swirl past.
January 12, 2024
The Carolina wren who sleeps above my laundry-room door forms a one-bird cheering section for the sunrise. Then the cloud-lid closes, and only the creek still sings.
January 6, 2024
Heavy gray clouds, and a breeze from the east: storm coming. Something flushes all the doves from the spring—a euphony of bright notes.
December 31, 2023
The cloud ceiling briefly switches to faint pastels: sunrise. One yammering nuthatch and, from down in the hollow, a screech owl’s soft trill.
December 29, 2023
Mostly clear at sunrise, but clouds gather in the east before the sun tops the ridge. A pair of ravens go over with a new word: two syllables, starting hoarse and ending clear.