The woods are filled with fog and a roar of traffic from over the ridge. The north roof of the springhouse still wears a scruff of ice.
fog
Fog. In the absence of the usual noise from quarry and factories, I can hear every grunt and groan of the trucks jake-braking on I-99.
Last night’s snow has left a scant half-inch of fur on all the trees—these naked sleepers. Some of it melts, some evaporates into fog.
Over the drumming of rain on the roof, a white-throated sparrow’s quavering song. The fog settles in, gray and inescapable as secret police.
Rain and fog. A dead branch gives way under the weight of seven jays, who fly up screaming as it crashes to the ground.
Another foggy morning. Beneath the orange leaves of the witch hazel in my garden, yellow blossoms are beginning to let down their wild hair.
Droplets of fog, back-lit by the sun, stream upward into the blue like reverse rain. At the woods’ edge, a migrant phoebe clears its throat.
Blue sky above the fog. The sun stretches long white spider legs into the woods. The cackle of a pileated woodpecker, followed by wingbeats.
Sun shining through fog and the growing tents of fall webworms. A sharp-shinned hawk sits atop the dead elm, his head swiveling all around.
Clear sky at sunrise, but the woods are still dripping. The sun sets the mist aglow. Trembling drops shift from color to color, prismatic.
Half an hour till sunrise. Over the brassy din of the dooryard birds, from off in the fog, the soft, wandering warble of a winter wren.
Fog and steady rain. A drenched gray squirrel bounds across what’s left of the snow and clears the rushing stream with a flying leap.
Thick fog. Snow melt-water drips onto the porch roof. A sudden scrabbling of squirrel claws on locust bark—that waterfall sound.
Warm rain. Fog rises from the melting snowpack, lifting and sinking in obedience to imperceptible changes in the air.