Over the drumming of rain on the roof, a white-throated sparrow’s quavering song. The fog settles in, gray and inescapable as secret police.
rain
Rain and fog. A dead branch gives way under the weight of seven jays, who fly up screaming as it crashes to the ground.
The lilac trembles from without and within: rain hammers the leaves while birds jockey for shelter under them—towhee, cardinal, wren.
It looks like rain, it smells like rain, but the morning passes without a drop. The goldfinches carry on being garrulous. A tree frog calls.
In the steady rain, the cheerful bickering of goldfinches. A mosquito brushes against the hair on my arm, looking for a clear way in.
Five nuthatches land in the walnut tree and begin scuttling up and down its trunk in the pouring rain, poking and probing the furrowed bark.
Dark and rainy. Peepers call from the marsh, and the half-leafed-out lilac seems to glow, achingly green against the brown woods.
Two ravens in the rain. One flies off to the south and the other lands on a dead branch. It breaks, and the bird flies off to the north.
A steady thrum of rain on the porch roof. The big red maple at the corner of the old corral is a cloud of salmon blossoms in the half light.
Clear sky at sunrise, but the woods are still dripping. The sun sets the mist aglow. Trembling drops shift from color to color, prismatic.
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.