Scattered chickadee calls coalesce into a heated argument. The sun emerges for half a minute through a vulva-shaped opening in the clouds.
clouds
11/25/2017
High clouds move slowly in the wrong direction; the sun goes from blear to smear. Up by the barn, a large agitation of chickadees.
11/10/2017
Among the leaves scudding past the porch, a stray snowflake. A blue seam opens in the clouds to the west where a raven is calling.
10/16/2017
The train’s horn is full of Monday. Migrating towhees compare notes at the edge of the woods. A blue wound closing in the clouds.
10/10/2017
Before dawn, the half moon’s flat edge passing through different types of clouds like a cheese knife. The neighbor’s rooster starts to crow.
9/8/2017
Cool and almost clear. A few clouds come scudding from the same direction as the highway noise, as if themselves powered by small engines.
4/2/2017
The sun fades as the sky turns paler blue. I close my eyes to listen to the creek—after rain, like a room full of whispered conversations.
3/13/2017
The drone of a single-prop plane, hidden like the horizon by trees. A mourning dove calls. The sun slowly submerges in a mud bath of clouds.
3/6/2017
Chickadees peck at the rapidly disappearing snow on the north side of the springhouse roof. As the ground turns brown, the sky turns white.
2/25/2017
Two song sparrows in a singing contest under dark clouds. I try to hear urgency and seriousness in their bubbly notes as the sky opens up.
2/24/2017
The usual bird calls—cardinal, titmouse, red-bellied woodpecker—but something seems off. It’s the clouds, coming from the wrong direction.
2/15/2017
A dusting of snow that fell while I was taking a shower has vanished again. Fast-moving clouds. On the wind, a train horn’s skewed chord.
2/5/2017
Under low, gray clouds, the sound of traffic from the valley. A titmouse at the woods’ edge keeps whistling his one, querulous note.
1/30/2017
Every cloud brings a scatter of snow. I gaze at the sun’s bright smudge, remembering a 38,000-year-old depiction of a cow stippled in stone.