Dawn comes with a light breeze rummaging through the oaks, a freight train laboring up the valley, the tutting of robins.
oaks
Friday November 05, 2021
A lone crow like a town crier repeating the same bit of news: how the rising sun, newly naked, is ablaze beneath the crowns of the oaks.
Thursday November 12, 2020
The oaks are twice as naked as they were yesterday. From above the clouds, a single clarinet note that might or might not be a Canada goose.
Saturday November 07, 2020
Clear and quiet except for the soft click-clack of oak leaves, slipping through a gauntlet of bare branches on their way to the ground.
Thursday October 29, 2020
Pouring rain—that thunderous arrhythmic percussion on the roof. The muted red and gold of the oaks give the forest a faint glow.
Saturday September 19, 2020
Cold and clear. Jays call up in the woods: at least one oak must’ve defied the drought and held on to its acorns.
Friday November 22, 2019
After a windy night, the whole horizon is visible beyond the trees. I watch one of the last oak leaves float down, rocking, taking its time.
Tuesday December 11, 2018
The wind sounds even colder hissing through the leaves that still cling to an oak at the woods’ edge. I pull down my cap against the sun.
Friday December 07, 2018
The ground is once again white, and there’s a wind. A dry, brown oak leaf dropping from the sky rocks from side to side like a small boat.
Thursday November 29, 2018
Cloudy but bright. I notice many of the pits in the old snow, melted down by oak leaves, have acquired new snow and a second, upstairs leaf.
Wednesday November 21, 2018
A singing contest between white-throated sparrows. Newly fallen oak leaves skitter back and forth on the snow under the trees.
Sunday November 18, 2018
A slow, rhythmless dripping from the top roof. The oak leaves scattered across the snow have only melted themselves the shallowest of pits.
Friday November 16, 2018
Truly an autumn snow: eight inches with a topping of fallen oak leaves. In the green and brown lilac, a house finch’s purple breast.
Tuesday November 13, 2018
Two oak leaves are caught by a birch, one after the other. From somewhere in the clouds, the buzzing rattle of a plane with a loose part.