Clear sky at sunrise, but the woods are still dripping. The sun sets the mist aglow. Trembling drops shift from color to color, prismatic.
rain
The last few wood frogs still croaking down in the marsh give way to spring peepers, who soon fall silent in turn. Then the patter of rain.
Rain begins at mid-morning: a cold drizzle. The sparrows in the lilac stop singing, but vultures still drift back and forth along the ridge.
After all-night rain, the sound of rushing water in all directions. I can barely hear the birds. A distant, dull clanking from the quarry.
The grass darkened by rain in the wee hours. Two crows gad about like a human couple united by their harsh disapproval of the same things.
Fog and steady rain. A drenched gray squirrel bounds across what’s left of the snow and clears the rushing stream with a flying leap.
Branches skinned by rabbits, yellow as fresh bones, are starting to emerge from the snowpack. Light rain on my glasses turns my view to blear.
When I step out, a pileated woodpecker flies cackling from a nearby tree, his crest as bright as a stop light this gray and rainy morning.
Steady rain. The corners of the yard still glisten dully with the pellet ice that fell in the night.
The ongoing warmth and rain have reduced the snow to scattered patches. Above the roar of the creek, a flock of goldfinches whistling.
Warm rain. Fog rises from the melting snowpack, lifting and sinking in obedience to imperceptible changes in the air.
There’s a shimmer in the air: rain fine as the hair on a woman’s back. The wet tree trunks are scrofulous with lichen.
Rain and fog. Two bucks stand among the trees, antlers dripping as they lower their heads for a better look at the doe lying in the weeds.
Cold rain. Three sparrows forage in the weeds next to a barberry bush, its green branches harboring masses of blood-red berries.