A gray sunrise, with the kind of tiny, windblown raindrops that started life as snow. Fire sirens wail in the valley, and I picture a house sprouting wings of flame.
rain
December 29, 2024
In the clouds, where rain has nearly erased the remains of the snow. A slow and steady procession of drips gets interrupted by a crow.
December 28, 2024
The tiny, second-string leaves the lilac put out in September have yellowed, glowing in the fog and drizzle like the bright chirps of sparrows.
December 24, 2024
A fresh half-inch of snow turns the woods’ edge into calligraphy. Then an inversion layer brings traffic noise, a shimmer of freezing drizzle, the tut-tutting of a Carolina wren.
December 11, 2024
A dark and rainy dawn. Will anything mark the hidden sunrise? Yes: three crows fly right over the house, yelling. The rain continues.
December 10, 2024
Damp and unseasonably warm. The sky brightens toward mid-morning, and the hillside’s coat of wet oak leaves begins to shine.
December 9, 2024
The snow on the road has turned to quaking puddles. The low rumble of a freight train is the only thing audible above the downpour.
November 28, 2024
Rain zebra-striped with snow; the woods more wet than white. A sodden squirrel trots down the road with a black walnut between her teeth.
November 26, 2024
Rainfall stopping by sunrise. An oak leaf comes sailing out of the woods and spirals down onto the porch. Holes in the clouds open and close like blue wounds.
November 24, 2024
Light rain at sunrise swept away by a light breeze, the monochrome sky accented by a pair of ravens, and down here a nuthatch going over the rules.
November 21, 2024
A red dawn, a redder sunrise, and a rain shower half an hour after that on the still-novel metal roof. I imagine a steel-pan drummer playing avant-garde calypso.
November 15, 2024
Every morning should come with fog like this, and the leftovers of an all-night rain still dripping onto the porch roof, and bright lichen on dark bark, and chickadees.
November 1, 2024
After rain in the small hours, a clearing wind at dawn. Winter wren song issues from a hole in the road bank—a quiet torrent.
October 2, 2024
Another dark, rainy dawn. I can’t stop thinking of my last dream before waking, in which I had died and reincarnated as a deer. I had so many legs, and everything was delicious!