A leaden sky slowly lightening toward midday. A wintry mix is coming and the birds know it: juncos in the driveway swallowing tiny stones.
clouds
February 21, 2022
Sun shining through thin, high clouds. An inversion layer turns the rumble of a freight train into something I can feel in my chest.
February 20, 2022
Clear and still. The stream has subsided from a roar to a babble: one inmate instead of the whole asylum. The first, skinny clouds.
February 12, 2022
Mid-morning. A large cloud over-brimming with golden light serves as ambassador for an advancing army of gray.
February 8, 2022
Scattered snowflakes like free-range musical notation for scattered chirps—chickadee, nuthatch. A hint of sunrise fading from the clouds.
February 5, 2022
Clouds going from pink to orange to yellow as the sky turns paler blue, all to the sound of running water and the whistling of doves’ wings.
January 28, 2022
The first flakes, fine as flour, from a dull gray sky: far edge of the predicted blizzard. A silent crow flies over. A woodpecker knocks.
January 20, 2022
Bright sun with a few clouds. Snowflakes wander this way and that like terranauts among the trees.
January 18, 2022
Windy and overcast at moonset, at dawn. Just when I’m thinking it’s unremittingly bleak, the gray sky acquires the faintest hint of pink.
December 26, 2021
The lacework of branches against the sky, with the half moon high overhead. A pileated woodpecker cackles. A small cloud’s belly turns pink.
December 22, 2021
Patches of blue sky; occasional snowflakes. What appears to be a butterfly fluttering through the treetops must be a dead leaf.
December 8, 2021
Rising late, what have I missed? The sky is white and the air is dead still. There’s no snow. The usual birds are making their usual sounds.
December 6, 2021
Warmish. The sun almost emerges through thinning clouds, heralded by chickadees foraging high in the black birches at the edge of the woods.
December 4, 2021
Clear except for two contrails, fuzzy with age. Another scrap of gray paper has fallen from the old hornets’ nest, its lines blank as ever.