Behind the sky’s thin skin, the sun is lurid as a bruise. More snow on the way. Six doves take off at once—the piccolo noise of their wings.
clouds
The only tracks on the road are mine, and the only clouds are right where the sun is. I hear heavy wingbeats followed by a raven’s croak.
White above and below. But looking more closely, I see the tracks of mice forced to leave the house to forage for weed seeds in the garden.
Two degrees below freezing, and the sky an almost uniform white except for a wrinkling in the east, like the brow of a corpse. Two crows.
A cold, gray morning. Up in the woods, a chickadee’s two-note song prompts a cardinal to join in. The sun’s hiding place begins to glow.
Juncos rustle quietly in the leaves beside the old springhouse. The sun spreads out behind thin clouds like a yolk broken in a pan.
The hillside crowd of trees swaying and churning. In the gray sky, blue wounds open. I can hear my mother shouting a greeting to the sun.
An oak up in the woods drops a top limb just as I am looking. The sky is gray and gravid with rain. The limb goes head-first like any diver.
A sharp-shinned hawk flying three feet above the ground arrows up into the woods. The faint hint of sun disappears behind thickening clouds.
The sun slowly dims in the whitening sky. Soft taps of a woodpecker. The flashing orange light on the roof of the meter reader’s truck.
Dark clouds against light clouds. A distant helicopter. A white-throated sparrow’s plaintive song wandering up and down the scale.
Overcast except for a hole where the sun glows like a bleary eye in a socket. A titmouse taps on a windowsill to open a sunflower seed.
Bands of cirrus that might’ve been contrails two hours ago are crossed by a helicopter, ponderous and loud, like an enormous scarab.
A cold morning. Two chipmunks calling 100 yards apart fall in and out of sync. Thin clouds block the sun before it ever reaches the porch.