Under a low cloud ceiling, the thunder of trains and traffic from the valley. The black cat’s deadly silence trips a gray-squirrel alarm.
clouds
10/13/2020
Mizzle: the wet feet of a cloud that slowly settles over the glowing trees, the lone, anxious jay, the clarinet voices of wild geese.
4/23/2020
Rising late, I sit gazing at the blank white sky and recalling my dreams: Mom turned into a zombie, stove possessed by demons, me applying for a job as a bus driver.
4/1/2020
Holes in the clouds by late morning. Field sparrows trill almost non-stop. My mother says she can smell my coffee way up in the woods.
3/30/2020
A sunny morning foreclosed upon by leaden clouds. The phoebe continues to rant from atop a black walnut sapling, marking time with his tail.
3/13/2020
Rain past, the hollow is full of birds. Fast moving clouds. A Carolina wren sings exultantly through a high gust of wind.
2/18/2020
Under a low, dark cloud ceiling, the echoing call and response of two mourning doves. A quiet gurgle from the stream. Not a breath of wind.
2/12/2020
Sunlight filtered through thin clouds looks somehow warmer than it is. Silence embellished by the resonant knocks of a pileated woodpecker.
2/5/2020
Sky gray as the skin of a corpse. An internal combustion engine’s profane orison. Some small bird hammering at the seed of a sunflower.
1/30/2020
As slowly as the sky cleared yesterday morning, today it returns to white, like the growing blankness in my memory where some face had been.
1/29/2020
Quiet save for water gurgling under the yard. Small patches of blue sky slowly merge. The sun comes out to a burst of goldfinch notes.
1/23/2020
Sunrise: a glimpse of yellow from beneath the lid of clouds. Goldfinches flutter down to drink from the stream’s thin fissure of open water.
1/12/2020
A yellow gash appears in the clouds to the east and heals up again. The cardinal attacks his reflection. Military jets howl over, unseen.
1/11/2020
Unseasonably warm. A patchy gray sky. Gliding high above the trees, a vulture, unseasonably far north.