The sun glints off periwinkle leaves in the yard where snow has just melted. All sounds come from a great distance: crow, woodpecker, train.
snow
2/17/2012
Blue sky. The snow has retreated to the northwest-facing hillside under the shelter of the trees. A train’s whistle made wavery by the wind.
2/15/2012
Out before dawn, I hear nothing but the drip of melting snow, gaze at a photographic-negative version of the woods: light ground, black sky.
2/12/2012
The wind moves snow back and forth across the ground like a restless sculptor. Trees creak and groan: a regular machinery of discontent.
2/10/2012
This snow makes it so much easier to keep track of squirrels, their mad chases on the ground, through the trees—showers of white dust.
2/9/2012
A branch breaks at the top of an oak, clatters through the too-loose grips of lower limbs and lands in the new snow’s too-shallow grave.
1/30/2012
Where the fresh snow has just melted on the concrete walkway, a bright green blush of lichen. The nuthatch’s three nasal notes.
1/28/2012
The snow is reduced to patches now, and the stream runs loud. The book I’m reading says there’s no such thing as a pure white horse.
1/25/2012
I think it’s partly because the hillside is covered with evergreen laurel that this phenomenon of a white ground still seems so surreal.
1/21/2012
Fresh, deep snow on all the outstretched branches at the woods’ edge—those trees that have always hungered for an extra helping of light.
1/20/2012
Cold—the porch floorboards pop under my feet. Real snow at last! The rising sun stretches two faint fingers across the driveway.
1/19/2012
Each blanketing of snow so far this winter has happened while we slept. How superstitious to insist that it all must’ve fallen from the sky!
1/18/2012
Trees rock and sway, infiltrated by snowflakes flying this way and that. From deep in the lilac, the wandering warble of a tree sparrow.
1/13/2012
Wind-driven snow; I draw my hood tight. On the wall behind me, the thermometer’s big red arrow inches left like a clock running backward.