The sky lightens and the rain eases off after a full night’s shift. The lilac looks twice as green as it did yesterday.
rain
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.
White sky and white ground meet in a blur of fog. Above the drumming of rain on the roof, a white-throated sparrow’s minor-key song.
After a night of light rain, the snowpack has shrunk, revealing a microtopography of logs, pits and mounds—bones under the skin of an elder.
Rain and fog at daybreak. Some intrepid deer hunter fires a single shot. I wonder how dry the squirrels are in their high, ball-shaped dreys.
A rustling in the fallen leaves turns out to be the briefest of showers. The sky brightens. I practice looking at trees as if for the first time.
Dark and wet. Puddles merge and flow on the driveway, rain stippling them like a mad monk writing O, O, O in invisible ink.
The tulip tree next to the springhouse is nearly bare, its last few leaves waving like four-fingered cartoon hands as the sky darkens to rain.