Trees sway and gyrate under a blue-gray sky. In a lull between gusts, a lost leaf flutters down out of the clouds. The phoebe calls.
clouds
March 25, 2014
A solid gray sky marred only by the sun’s blurred searchlight. It’s cold. From all directions, the anxious-sounding calls of woodpeckers.
March 20, 2014
Dark clouds, and a sombre brightness underneath. A few, wet flakes of snow swirl past. Robin song.
March 15, 2014
Holes open and close in the fast-moving clouds. Where the snow has gone from the yard, a white eggshell rests on the flattened stiltgrass.
February 24, 2014
Cold and bright. The trees stand in their melted pits, legacy of the recent thaw. I watch the wind shred a fast-moving cloud.
February 23, 2014
In the silence after the bulldozer stops, a song sparrow sings his lying spring song over and over. A gauze of stratus cloud dims the sun.
February 11, 2014
It’s cold. A few, desultory flakes drift down from a half-clear sky. The trees’ long shadows fade in and out.
February 8, 2014
Sunlight softened by high clouds. A great stillness, punctuated by the flutter of sparrow wings and a chickadee singing its spring song.
January 28, 2014
It’s very cold. I’m glad for the sun, which however soon begins to pulse as thin, parallel clouds move in, as regular as waves on a beach.
January 15, 2014
A lighter band of clouds above the horizon. Half-way up the brown hillside, a flock of winter birds—flashes of white from their wings.
December 30, 2013
As daylight gathers, the sky goes from white to gray. A train whistle trailed by its rumble of freight. The distant propellers of a plane.
December 27, 2013
The sun flickers as thin clouds drift past. In the otherwise still meadow, one bent head of brome grass is swaying.
November 21, 2013
Weak sunlight from a whitening sky. A flock of juncos comes twittering into the lilac, hopping on and off the old, broken statue of a dog.
November 18, 2013
Shreds of clouds disintegrate as they drift toward the east. Sun on wind-tossed mountain laurel leaves—the whole hillside shimmers.