Scattered chickadee calls coalesce into a heated argument. The sun emerges for half a minute through a vulva-shaped opening in the clouds.
clouds
High clouds move slowly in the wrong direction; the sun goes from blear to smear. Up by the barn, a large agitation of chickadees.
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.
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.
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.
Cool and almost clear. A few clouds come scudding from the same direction as the highway noise, as if themselves powered by small engines.
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.
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.
Chickadees peck at the rapidly disappearing snow on the north side of the springhouse roof. As the ground turns brown, the sky turns white.
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.
The usual bird calls—cardinal, titmouse, red-bellied woodpecker—but something seems off. It’s the clouds, coming from the wrong direction.
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.
Under low, gray clouds, the sound of traffic from the valley. A titmouse at the woods’ edge keeps whistling his one, querulous note.
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.