Cool and still damp from rain in the small hours. The sun goes back in after just fifteen minutes. The house finch stops caroling as the wind picks up.
rain
A freakishly warm breeze lightly seasoned with rain. The sun appears and disappears at random. A Louisiana waterthrush calls from the first bend in the creek below the spring.
A rainy Easter morning. At 6:31 a.m., in the half-light of dawn, a brown thrasher announces his return from the tropics with a minute-long improvisation atop the springhouse roof.
An April shower turns into a downpour just as I come out onto the porch. I look up from my book sometime later and realize that it’s stopped. The sky brightens. A towhee and a song sparrow trade riffs.
Damp, overcast and cool. The pussy willow I planted two years ago is in its glory, gray catkins cottony with droplets of water. A small cloud forms in the meadow behind the barn and drifts up toward the ridge.
Warm and damp. A rain shower passes through while I scroll the headlines. A tufted titmouse turns up the volume on his spring song.
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 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.