It keeps raining and stopping, as if on a movie set. Eight rapid pops: someone firing a semi-automatic. The stream gurgles under the yard.
rain
December 10, 2012
Pale patches on the upper sides of branches, almost like snow: lichens opening their pores to the rain and fog. My left eyelid twitches.
December 9, 2012
A flat-gray sky. Train whistles and quarry noise travel up the hollow, accompanying two overlapped umbrellas, one black, one white.
December 4, 2012
Trees glistening with raindrops cast shadows through the rising fog. A sudden ripple of squirrel alarm-calls as a hawk cuts through.
October 29, 2012
Weather report, 11 a.m.: Light drizzle. Gusts of wind up to 3 MPH. The still-green lilac looks freakish now against the mostly bare trees.
October 28, 2012
In the cold rain, a squirrel sits on an elm limb with its back to the trunk working on a walnut, its tail folded over its head like a hood.
September 18, 2012
1:15 a.m. Thinking there’s something chewing on the leaves outside my window, I get the flashlight and discover rain. Time for bed.
September 8, 2012
The hairs on my arm tower over the scarlet mite wandering among them. The air shimmers with what the Chinese call maomaoyu—fine hair rain.
September 5, 2012
The distant gargle of compression release engine brakes. Dark clouds moving very slowly, as if deliberating where to drop their rain.
August 10, 2012
A shimmer of rain. One of the lower branches on the big tulip tree has been stripped of bark, but its leaves haven’t gotten the news.
August 5, 2012
Just after daylight, the sound of a shower approaching and petering out before it reaches the porch. Two chickadees flit through the bushes.
July 21, 2012
Spiderwebs in the meadow and the big rosettes of mullein leaves next to the road glisten with their haul of beads from last night’s rain.
July 20, 2012
A deer leaps and twists in the tall grass to elude a fly, his damp pelt pale as a salmon, hoarse breathing just audible above the rain.
June 12, 2012
An indigo bunting lands on a grass stalk and sinks from view. A white moth on a white column trembles for an instant when the rain returns.