Gentle rain. The intense green of new leaves everywhere but inside the ring of fencing around a tulip tree that appeared in my yard during the pandemic like a blessing. Its buds show no sign they’ll ever open again. I don’t know why.
rain
May 1, 2024
Cloudless at sunrise, with rain still clinging to the grass. Tree leaves are on average half open now, making the woods’ edge half screen, half wall.
April 27, 2024
Under a white sky, the rambling old white lilac is beginning to bloom. Half an hour past sunrise, the first, tentative raindrops on the roof.
April 10, 2024
Rainy and cool. An eastern towhee is urging me—according to the time-honored birders’ mnemonic—to drink my tea, while woodpeckers large and small bang their heads against the trees.
April 6, 2024
A spit of rain in my face at sunrise, despite the lack of clouds—classic April. It’s cold. The miniature daffodils have been blooming for a solid month.
April 3, 2024
In the pre-dawn darkness, nothing but the sounds of rain and water. A low rumbling comes from the hole in my yard that leads down to the stream just before it emerges into a spring.
April 2, 2024
Rain. Every ditch runs with whitewater. Behind the bright forsythia, a gray wall of fog swallows the trees. Nevertheless, a wren.
April 1, 2024
The all-night rain doesn’t let up for dawn. The dim light spreads from the southeast, where the waning moon must be, to the east. It’s April. Fools and poets rejoice.
March 23, 2024
Rain and fog. The birds call one at a time, as if auditioning. A sodden squirrel, grayer than gray, trots across the gray gravel road.
March 9, 2024
Rain and robin song. The sky darkens. The black birches look dapper in their gray-green suits of lichen.
March 5, 2024
Dripping at dawn has thickened into steady rain by the time I get out of the shower. The robins, cardinals, woodpeckers and wrens seem barely to have noticed. It’s spring.
March 2, 2024
Rain clouds have settled in among the trees with their bodies like smoke. Wood frogs and forest salamanders must be stirring in their death-like sleep.
January 28, 2024
Day slips in among torrents of rain. The woods are mangy with scattered patches of old snow. The gurgle of a wren.
January 13, 2024
After a night of snow and rain, trees rock and clatter under orange clouds. The roof drips. Scattered flakes swirl past.