Clear and cool. Snow is mostly gone from the hillside, but the newly uncovered leaf duff is still damp and flattened, shining in the sun.
snow
Crows call through the fog. I open my book to a haiku about crows calling through fog. Having melted a bit, the snow is again a blank page.
Snow blowing off the trees mingles with fresh flakes. Cloud shadow subsumes tree shadows like a malnourished rabbit reabsorbing her young.
Sky and ground both flat white. A squirrel missing a quarter of her tail is fossicking through the snow, ignored by a high-speed chipmunk.
Bird tracks in the snow next to the house like meandering lines of cuneiform verse, breaking off at odd points where something took flight.
Something has been ripping into the old hornet’s nest on the porch ceiling: pieces of its gray paper litter the fresh snow. A wren flies in.
Late morning and the rain stops, the fog lifts to reveal the same snow-clad mountain as before. The distant sound of an engine being revved.
Today the icy snowpack can just support my weight. Crows down at the end of the field remind me of Twitter: two’s company, three’s a mob.
Deep blue sky. A small cloud forms right where I’m gazing. In my garden, a rock has melted the snow around it as if it’s alive.
Drip and chitter: the snow is melting, and up at the other house, the birds must be finding seeds that had been buried beneath the feeders.
Blinking the sleep from my eyes, I watch a chipmunk awoken from hibernation racing from covert to covert through the inch-deep snow.
Bright sun, bone-chilling wind. The hillside has lost its white blanket, which makes it feel even colder. The clouds are again worlds apart.
Cold rain; the snowpack is in tatters now. At the top of a locust snag, a gray squirrel’s tail waves and twitches like a mad flag.
Small clouds rise from the decaying snowpack and drift off through the trees. In the yard, a vole’s tunnel system is beginning to emerge.