Chipmunks coming into heat chase each other over the bright, melting snow. I recall that their name comes from the Ojibwe for “headlong.”
snow
Sunny and cold. A chipmunk’s awake, racing over the snow at the woods’ edge. Icicles fall from the roof and shatter with a festive tinkling.
A long log has slid down so that it rests like a seesaw on the top of the road bank. Tree shadows on the snow darken and grow faint again.
I watch two different squirrel entourages trailing females through the treetops until both are swallowed by a slow-moving snow squall.
A patch of dirt laid bare by the snow plow is aswirl with birds of all kinds. Even a robin appears, as if to assess the likelihood of worms.
Snowstorm. The porch, too, has been erased, except where some small bird’s meandering footprints have exposed the blood-colored floor.
Every cloud brings a scatter of snow. I gaze at the sun’s bright smudge, remembering a 38,000-year-old depiction of a cow stippled in stone.
A few, wandering flakes slowly build into a snow squall. From my parents’ back porch, the “towhee” call of a towhee that hasn’t gone south.
A skim of snow. A jay monitored by three fierce chickadees gives that red-tailed hawk scream—the one that signifies an eagle in the movies.
The last trace of snow has gone again. The sky is blank. What kind of January is this? Trees rock back and forth like traumatized refugees.
A clearing wind accompanied by Carolina wren song. At the woods’ edge, moss is already emerging from yesterday’s snow, greener than ever.
The black-and-white simplicity of a fairy-tale snow that clings to every dark twig: a fragile magic that never lasts beyond eleven o’clock.
Heavy frost blurs the difference between snow-free meadow and woods, where a white fur lingers. The distant stutter of a Jake-braking truck.
A barred owl calls in the bright sun. Snow meltwater starts dripping onto the porch roof—a simple rhythm that grows increasingly complex.