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.
cold
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.
Cold, with a bitter wind. The juncos sound twice as cheerful as they did before the snow, twittering as they chase through the lilac.
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.
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.
Clear and very cold. A single squirrel track crosses the yard, the footprints spaced far apart. The windward side of my face turns numb.
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.
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.
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.
Cold, gray and windy. The peony sprouts, up early this year, are still at the point of just untwisting their skinny red fists.
Cold—the porch floorboards pop under my feet. Real snow at last! The rising sun stretches two faint fingers across the driveway.
I bring no hat brim or sunglasses to my front-porch tete-a-tete with the sun, grateful on such a cold morning for any display of warmth.
Wind-driven snow; I draw my hood tight. On the wall behind me, the thermometer’s big red arrow inches left like a clock running backward.
Bitter cold. An hour before dawn, something crunches briefly in the brush and is still, as if turning over in its sleep.