Where the stream fans out beside the springhouse, birds hop down the snowbanks and into the water to bathe: sparrows, juncos, Carolina wren.
snow
Truly an autumn snow: eight inches with a topping of fallen oak leaves. In the green and brown lilac, a house finch’s purple breast.
Falling snow infiltrated by sleet—that clicking like a room full of typists. A jay has sole custody of the color blue—his two-note solo.
A few, tiny patches of snow linger behind clumps of dead stiltgrass. The sun blazes through the thinning crown of an oak; I start to sneeze.
First snowfall of the year—a quarter inch. Newly fallen oak leaves roll across it, or scuttle like crabs on their curled lobe-tips.
I slept in, but what have I slept into? Rain. No, snow. No, sun. The wind roaring on the wrong ridge. Church bells ringing in town.
Snow in the air and here and there on the ground: unseasonable seasoning. A gray squirrel bounds up the gray road, all smoke and tailpipe.
In the strong sun, tiny icicles grow at the edge of the porch roof only to fall again, like baby teeth fed on the milk of last night’s snow.
A new half-inch of snow as evanescent as dew under the April sun, on the porch floor retreating to the shadows of the railings as I watch.
Five inches of wet snow like an April Fool’s prank that came a few hours late. The juncos at the bird feeder can twitter about nothing else.
The last patch of snow lies like a crumpled piece of litter at the woods’ edge. The dog licks up the weeks-old remains of her own bile.
Fog settles in, full of the labor of freight trains. Snow mounded up by the plow rots in the otherwise bare yard like a white whale carcass.
Bright sun. After several days of freeze and thaw, the snow conforms to every bump and divot as if the hillside has been shrink-wrapped.
Blue shadows on the snow and a breeze with teeth. I test the snow by tossing out an apple core. It bounces rather than sinks.