Now that the wind has died, I can admire its work: the yard scoured like a salt flat, the stream turned into a canyon with dangerous curves.
snow
February 14, 2015
From the valley, a wailing duet of fire sirens. Woodpeckers tap and listen, tap and listen, as the soft, light snow goes on falling.
February 13, 2015
Bright sun, and meltwater drips from the roof despite the cold. I think about microclimates—pits in the snow around dark goldenrod stalks.
February 12, 2015
Another flash mob of crows—a knot, a clot. (No murder yet.) A sudden snow squall and my dark jeans and coat are studded with stars.
February 11, 2015
The small hole in the yard that leads to the underground stream has melted open, dark as a blowhole in the skin of a white whale.
February 9, 2015
Thick fog. A steady drumming of snowmelt on the porch roof. A bluejay in the barberry, out of what looks like sheer boredom, begins to yell.
February 8, 2015
A gray day loud with traffic. The snowpack has slid half-way off the metal roof over the oil tanks, curling under the eaves like a claw.
February 7, 2015
A gray morning. I notice, silhouetted against the snow, how all the heads in each patch of wild garlic are bent in the same direction.
February 6, 2015
The only tracks on the road are mine, and the only clouds are right where the sun is. I hear heavy wingbeats followed by a raven’s croak.
January 31, 2015
Clear and very cold. The wind has erased all tracks but its own, and the trees’ etiolated shadows rock back and forth like trauma survivors.
January 27, 2015
The barberry bush, still red with fruit, is heavy with a second crop of snow. From its depths, a white-throated sparrow’s plaintive song.
January 24, 2015
A wet snow has turned the trees Victorian, every last twig edged with filigree. The only sound from the valley is the rumbling of trains.
January 23, 2015
White above and below. But looking more closely, I see the tracks of mice forced to leave the house to forage for weed seeds in the garden.
January 22, 2015
Despite the wind, yesterday’s snow still clings to the trees, like the sleep I keep trying to rub from my eyes. A wren’s ascending rattle.