We may have lost an hour from our phones, but at least the nukes haven’t started flying yet. The half moon sets. A few drops of rain darken the sidewalk. I am regarded gravely by a red squirrel.
rain
Rain at one degree above freezing. How sweet it must taste to the daffodil bulbs awakening in the thawed garden and the wild onions stirring at the meadow’s edge.
The thaw has come, and the ground is mostly earth-colored again. A breeze springs up, spotting my glasses with rain. The sound of traffic.
Warm, torrential showers overnight have reduced the snow to a few, scattered patches. The clouds thin—a radiant break in the rain.
Gloomy and still. The faint rattle of something like rain, that soon turns into something like snow and peters out. A distant honking of geese.
The rain peters out not long after sunrise. Fog retreats up the hill. A ladybird beetle wanders the folds of my barn coat.
Light rain as the sky grows light. Two screech owls call back and forth, trill answering quaver, just as the Carolina wrens do a few minutes later.
Drizzle at sunrise. Rain-slick tree trunks shine in their green sleeves of lichen. The sky shows signs of breaking up.
Mostly clear after last night’s rain. A flat-tire moon hangs low in the west. The wingbeats of a raven are, for a few moments, the loudest sound.
Cold wind seasoned with rain—almost maritime weather. I sit in my old barn coat like a barnacle, listening for the approach of dawn.
Hard rain easing off by mid-morning. The sky brightens. A junco by the springhouse warbles its most complex song.
Wind and rain at dawn. Half an hour before sunrise, a great twittering erupts from the meadow as hundreds of white-throated sparrows, sheltering deep in the goldenrod, begin to awaken.
Steady rain from heavy clouds, with the seeming glow of orange and yellow leaves in lieu of a sunrise. A drenched gray squirrel beside the porch peers up at the sky.
From hard rain to a shimmer of drizzle to almost-sun by late morning, I have sat with a wounded foot propped up on the porch railing like an unlucky rabbit, taking whatever comes.