Cloudy and cold. In the thinning treetops, a squirrel takes a wild leap to lose a suitor. Tulip tree samaras helicopter down.
clouds
A low cloud ceiling gravid with rain. It’s quiet. Every few seconds, another yellow leaf zigzags down.
Mares’ tails reddening in the east. The reedy songs of white-throated sparrows. A raven’s nasal croak.
Under a thinning white sky, the thinning crown of a black cherry tree already less green than salmon. The sunflowers face every direction.
In one hole in the clouds a meteor; in another the dawn. The scattered notes of night-flying migrants coming down to roost. A quarry truck beeping.
The sun passes through windrows of clouds. It’s quiet. I look forward to another day waiting for the Godot that is a Verizon repairman.
Sunrise hidden by clouds. Towhee and cardinal’s usual soliloquies. A mosquito sings her need into my ear.
Dawn. A bat zig-zags high over the meadow en route to its roost as the few clouds turn pink.
Shadows lose their sharp edges as thin, high clouds move in. Where the coyote chorus sang last night, now only the distant howls of children.
Gray sky gravid with bad weather. On either side of the road, the tall grass trembles: foraging chipmunks.
Sun through thin clouds. Dame’s-rocket in the meadow keeps growing to extend the bloom: a slowly rising, purple mist.
The black cherry blossoms are already fading, and the sun is going from dandelion-yellow to dandelion seedhead-white. Black-billed cuckoo.
Amorous squeaks of squirrels. A small fissure in the clouds approaches the sun and the frozen landscape brightens for half a minute.
Bitter cold. Clouds hide the sunrise, but the crows still herald it. The squirrels appear to be staying in their nests.