The stream is loud with snowmelt and last night’s rain. The fog retreats up the hillside, leaving black birch trunks aglow in green lichen.
fog
Fog lingering well into mid-morning. On the northwest-facing hillside, snow cover is down to about 50 percent: lacework, says my internal idealist. In tatters, the realist replies.
Misty and gray, with endless commentary from crows. The sun appears for half a minute without coming fully out, as pileated woodpeckers cackle in the yard.
The gray supremacy of fog, filtering out the valley’s noise, leaving only the drumming of woodpeckers and the low rumble of a jet high overhead.
Thick fog that lingers for hours, cancelling most noise except for the muffled taps of woodpeckers. A red squirrel nearly walks under my chair, then thinks better of it.
The rain peters out not long after sunrise. Fog retreats up the hill. A ladybird beetle wanders the folds of my barn coat.
Thick fog. A screech owl trills, seemingly in answer to the wren. Then crows join the chat. The owl’s trilling pauses, then resumes a quarter mile away.
Freezing fog that lifts after sunrise into a gray woolen sky, leaving frosted branches for the squirrels—gray or red, cautious or pell-mell.
Thick fog. When the wren stops singing, there’s dead silence for several minutes until a nuthatch calls. From father away, the death-cry of a rabbit.
Mist dissipating into blue. The walnut trees on the north side of the house are now nearly bare, even as the one on the south side is still more green than yellow. The sun briefly blazes through a new hole in the hillside canopy.
A knife-thin moon fades into the dawn sky. The only cloud huddles in the bottom corner of the meadow, where a phoebe is calling.
Inside a white whale of fog, the trees drip and drop yellow leaves, and the sun is felt more than seen, with a faint wash of blue beyond.
Fog rising into blue. Everything drips. A hummingbird sits on a small branch in a small walnut tree, head swiveling all about.
A crescent moon above the ridge at dawn is lost in fog by sunrise. A hummingbird bothers the bergamot, and a wood thrush is singing as lustily as if it were still June.