Leaves glistening with last night’s rain. A distant raven. The puttering of a hummingbird’s small motor.
raven
Clear and cool at sunrise. A phoebe’s bill snaps on a slow cranefly. From high overhead, the tolling of a bell soon turns into raven croaks.
Cloudy and cool. I carry an offering of soup bones out to the ravens. A great-crested flycatcher lets loose.
Frost in the yard. How many tender young leaves will collapse and blacken at the sun’s touch? A goldfinch warbles in the treetops. A raven gargles.
The mid-morning sun in the forecast comes with a scrim of cloud, a breeze, and a raven on the ridgetop going bonk…bonk…bonk…
Still air and a heavy frost. A pair of ravens fly side by side over the porch, one calling like a crow—falsetto—the other like a death rattle.
A mottled white sky with crows to the north and ravens croaking off to the south. The snowpack is soft and granular, absorbing sound.
The frosted meadow glitters in the sun. A scrabbling of squirrel claws on bark. Off to the south, a raven croaks; to the north, crows.
The sun finally clears the ridgetop at 8:00. A crow at the compost has an exchange with a raven high overhead: caw caw caw ARK ARK ARK etc.
Deep blue sky with last night’s rain still glistening in the understory. In the sun-drenched canopy, four crows sit yelling at a raven.
Dawn sky striped with red. A small cloud forms in the hollow. The sleepy croaks of a raven: urk, argh. Then the wren and it’s day.
Every time I look up from my book, more sunlight has infiltrated the forest like bright rungs of a ladder. A raven clears its throat.
With crows about, a raven skulks through the pines, talking with its mate in sotto voce rattles. They fly over the porch with labored wingbeats.
Zero degrees. Sun through bare branches—a shining fur of hoarfrost. Two ravens fly in low and circle my mother’s house.