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.
rain
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!
October 1, 2024
The rain slackens toward mid-morning and I can hear chirps and twitters: warblers in their muted autumn colors foraging for breakfast in the treetops.
September 30, 2024
Rain. The rumble of a distant jet. A squirrel crouches on a limb with her tail over her head, chiseling open a walnut.
September 29, 2024
The rain goes on and on for hours. I watch a drenched squirrel at the end of a branch lose his grip on a walnut. A small brown moth circles my face.