Heavily overcast without a breath of wind—classic November weather. A small carnival of goldfinches moves through the treetops on squeaky wheels.
clouds
An hour past sunrise, the sky is half blue. The two-year-old tulip tree inside its cage of fencing waves a last, yellow leaf.
In the stillness of dawn, a blood-red stain spreads through the clouds. The winter wren wakes before the Carolina wren for once, with only slightly less strident results.
Warm and breezy with bright holes in the clouds. The sprawling old lilac is well into its second spring, with a new crop of bright green leaves at all stages of development, from tiny to full-sized.
Cloudy and unseasonably warm at sunrise. My head throbs from watching election returns. A small buck walks by below the house sporting a single spike of antler—a unicorn.
Another large oak has de-leafed, leaving more room for the overcast sky and its patchwork of light and dark. A screech owl trills one last time before full day.
The sun rises an hour earlier, heralded by the usual motley assortment of sparrows, wrens and corvids. The stratosphere breaks out into a rash of clouds.
A screech owl trilling just before sunrise sets the small birds off. The forsythia at the woods’ edge is once again yellow. The clouds turn red.
A cloud that started life as a contrail turns livid as a cut then slowly fades to white before dissolving. A white-throated sparrow repeatedly sings a single, interrogatory note.
Red dawn spreading like a wine spill from a small patch of burgundy near the moon, which I watch with head held still to see it inch from twig to twig. A white-throated sparrow is the first to sing.
Clouds with yellow bellies and a clearing breeze. One oak leaf spirals down stem-first, hits the ground and bounces.
Overcast and gloomy. A single scarlet bough glows like a stoplight in the dark woods. The distant drumming of a pileated woodpecker.
More clouds than sun. A smell of woodsmoke. Stillness haunted by the distant sounds of wheels and engines.
Fog that lasts for hours, blurring the lines between night and day, and between sky and ground for night-flying migrants now foraging all along the woods’ edge—a cloud full of food.