A cloud has settled in and delegated to the trees its responsibility to rain. Some restless animal gnaws on a beam under the house.
fog
January 30, 2013
Dull yellow stripes in the fog: the rising sun slipping between ridge-top trees; thin tulip poplar branches chewed bare by a porcupine.
January 29, 2013
Out of the dense fog, the too-fast-to-count taps of a woodpecker drumming for the music of it. He pauses to let a train whistle blow.
January 13, 2013
Thick fog and a slow dripping of meltwater onto the porch roof. Some of the animal tracks in the yard have melted through—dark portholes.
December 17, 2012
Thin fog, as in the corners of a tintype. It seems too quiet for a Monday morning; traffic on the interstate is a faint, far moan.
December 10, 2012
Pale patches on the upper sides of branches, almost like snow: lichens opening their pores to the rain and fog. My left eyelid twitches.
December 8, 2012
Sunny and warm with an inversion layer: the clamor of traffic from I-99 and a mist-filled forest. Filmy-winged insects begin to appear.
December 4, 2012
Trees glistening with raindrops cast shadows through the rising fog. A sudden ripple of squirrel alarm-calls as a hawk cuts through.
September 7, 2012
Fog from the valley spills over the ridgetop and advances on the porch. The jays start calling, unable to see each other in adjacent trees.
August 22, 2012
Sunbeams through the fog. The thin bull thistle beside the road with its one purple head sways ever so slightly into and out of the light.
August 21, 2012
Tent caterpillar webs billow, white as sails—still full of the dawn fog. Two nuthatches kvetch back and forth at the woods’ edge.
May 5, 2012
Thin fog. A flicker is excavating a den hole in the dead elm on the other side of the yard, his head almost disappearing into the tree.
March 31, 2012
Thin fog. A yearling fawn play-mounts his mother, and is mounted in turn by his twin. A robin tut-tut-tuts from the driveway.
March 25, 2012
Thick fog and silence, punctuated by the low, almost infrasonic throbs of a drumming grouse. The nasal cries of a fish crow pass overhead.