It’s cold—I can hear it in the way the wind hisses in the dead grass. As the sun climbs through the trees, I close one eye then the other.
cold
January 12, 2014
The temperature is back below freezing, and the road is a ribbon of ice. I watch the treetops rocking in the wind and think of sea anemones.
January 7, 2014
The trees creak in the wind, casting only the thinnest of shadows. My breath freezes into two small icicles at the bottom of my beard.
January 3, 2014
The croak of a raven followed by a tree popping in the cold, loud as a gunshot. A chickadee flits through the branches of a birch, singing.
December 12, 2013
Trees pop in the cold. I close my eyes against the sun and watch its track fade on my retina: a connect-the-dots drawing gone wrong.
November 13, 2013
Cold, with a bitter wind. The juncos sound twice as cheerful as they did before the snow, twittering as they chase through the lilac.
March 3, 2013
Cloudy and cold. From over at the neighbors’, the low rumbling of a large machine and the excited shrieks of children eddy on the wind.
February 20, 2013
Bitter cold and overcast, but still the porch roof rattles with a staccato rhythm of drips from the second-floor roof’s two-inch icicles.
January 23, 2013
Clear and very cold. A single squirrel track crosses the yard, the footprints spaced far apart. The windward side of my face turns numb.
January 22, 2013
Bitter cold with a wind. The hillside seems unusually still, and after a while I realize it’s because there aren’t any squirrels out.
January 19, 2013
After a cold night, the temperature climbs to 40 by mid-morning and the snow loses its hard sparkle, flattens into a shining white pelt.
January 18, 2013
It’s very cold; the tall locust at the woods’ edge creaks with ice. A woodpecker taps on the topmost limb, silhouetted against pink clouds.
April 10, 2012
Cold, gray and windy. The peony sprouts, up early this year, are still at the point of just untwisting their skinny red fists.
January 20, 2012
Cold—the porch floorboards pop under my feet. Real snow at last! The rising sun stretches two faint fingers across the driveway.