Thick fog brightening in the east. Over the roar of the creek, a phoebe’s small, inexhaustible engine.
fog
April 2, 2024
Rain. Every ditch runs with whitewater. Behind the bright forsythia, a gray wall of fog swallows the trees. Nevertheless, a wren.
March 23, 2024
Rain and fog. The birds call one at a time, as if auditioning. A sodden squirrel, grayer than gray, trots across the gray gravel road.
March 6, 2024
Thick fog that lasts for hours. Sunrise must’ve been that big flock of red-winged blackbirds and grackles crackling and creaking like old doors.
February 28, 2024
Fog full of birdsong. I look up from the page to a rumble of thunder that makes the windows shake.
February 23, 2024
Foggy at dawn with sound out of the east—the quarry instead of the interstate. Gray-green lichens glow on the rain-darkened trunks of sweet birches all along the edge of the woods.
January 26, 2024
Fog on snow. The hidden full moon’s false dawn obscures the real one. Distant traffic is drowned out by the sound of rushing water.
January 25, 2024
Fog blurs the difference between the white below and above, the trees reduced to gray wraiths as a Carolina wren sings for the break of day.
December 28, 2023
Sun almost shining through the fog. A winter wren warbles from the marsh. Up by the garage, bluebirds. It feels like March, with December light.
December 27, 2023
Thick fog and silence. A song sparrow pipes up just before sunrise. It gets darker again. A bluebird warbles as the rain resumes.
December 26, 2023
Rain tapering into mist and drizzle. A squirrel finds a black walnut next to the road, swiftly de-husks it and carries it away. The sky brightens. A goldfinch lisps a single note.
December 2, 2023
Fog hides the sunrise, apart from a small opening on the ridgetop that fills with golden light. Then the gray curtain comes down again.
October 19, 2023
One degree above freezing and very still. I add my breath to the ground fog rising through yellow leaves into the sunlight.
October 4, 2023
Half moon high overhead at 5:00, half-illuminating the ground fog and darkening the shadows into which walnuts thud down.