A faint dusting of snow on a ground otherwise mostly brown again. It’s just below freezing. The sun makes a dramatic entrance from beneath a curtain of cloud.
clouds
The sky clears at about the same rate as caffeine clears my head—a transitory state, no doubt, and host to a mob of crows.
A leaden sky slowly lightening toward midday. A wintry mix is coming and the birds know it: juncos in the driveway swallowing tiny stones.
Sun shining through thin, high clouds. An inversion layer turns the rumble of a freight train into something I can feel in my chest.
Clear and still. The stream has subsided from a roar to a babble: one inmate instead of the whole asylum. The first, skinny clouds.
Mid-morning. A large cloud over-brimming with golden light serves as ambassador for an advancing army of gray.
Scattered snowflakes like free-range musical notation for scattered chirps—chickadee, nuthatch. A hint of sunrise fading from the clouds.
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.
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.
Bright sun with a few clouds. Snowflakes wander this way and that like terranauts among the trees.
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.
The lacework of branches against the sky, with the half moon high overhead. A pileated woodpecker cackles. A small cloud’s belly turns pink.
Patches of blue sky; occasional snowflakes. What appears to be a butterfly fluttering through the treetops must be a dead leaf.
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.