Two male towhees displaying at each other with what looks almost like affection. A brown thrasher’s one-bird echo chamber. The smell of rain.
rain
After last night’s rain, the sun keeps not coming out. Up in the woods, a breeze in the top of one red oak makes a sudden shower.
Cold rain. I tap the thermometer and it drops another two degrees. The rattle of sleet gives way after a few minutes to the silence of snow.
The last to shed leaves in the fall is the first to regrow them: sprawling lilac with green tongues just long enough to catch drops of rain.
The rain eases off and the sun ventures out. I spot two mullein plants in the yard, leaves fattening into foundations for the coming stalks.
Under a slowly clearing sky, the new, red-green peony leaves are still beaded with last night’s rain. No trains running; it’s all birdsong.
The sky lightens and the rain eases off after a full night’s shift. The lilac looks twice as green as it did yesterday.
Late morning; a pause in the rain. Arboreal lichens glow blue-green under a low cloud ceiling.
The sort of rain that makes the world puddle-wonderful. Around the broken old dog statue, the daffodils have drawn their yellow hoop.
Rain and the first daffodils: April has come early. Fog appears and disappears among the trees. The robin unspools a silver thread of song.
Dawn. A phoebe and a cardinal are singing in the rain. At the woods’ edge, the last patch of snow has shrunk to the size of a hubcap.
A dark morning; the ridges disappear into fog. A Carolina wren’s call is barely audible over the rain’s deafening hush.
Rain on asphalt shingles, rain on corrugated tin, rain on twigs and branches, rain on the road, rain on three months’ worth of grainy snow.
A pause in the rain. My snow-plowed mound has turned to slush, which makes an interesting feature for a writer’s front yard: a literal slush pile.