The ground is mostly bare again, but the wind is salted with more fine flakes. Water thunders in every ditch. A freight train wails.
snow
March 10, 2011
Hard rain falling into slush, and the fog thickening: cloud into cloud. Buds glow yellow on the lilac where two titmice flit.
March 8, 2011
Trying to like this late snow, its sparkles and shadows, I hear the distant cries of swans, fleeing north in search of true tundra.
March 7, 2011
Snow has turned all the lower limbs into wide white feathers, but treetops are bare against the blue. From somewhere in between, the hawk.
March 5, 2011
Overcast and quiet. The remaining snowbanks like beached white whales dampen the leaves around them with their slow collapse.
March 1, 2011
Backlit by the sun, the weathered mountain laurel bushes turn to green fire under the trees, with pale shadows that must be patches of snow.
February 28, 2011
After all-night rain, snow cover persists in the woods, but it must be thin. The trees loom and fade as the fog shifts. The stream roars.
February 22, 2011
Six inches of fresh powder. A pair of squirrels wrestle in it, then go up the big maple, couple on the trunk, and retreat to separate limbs.
February 18, 2011
I hear voices: snowmelt whispering, murmuring, sighing, gurgling a hundred ways at once. Up in the newly bare field, a turkey gobbles.
February 17, 2011
It’s in the 40s and noisy with the sound of trucks. Each tree stands in a small circle of melted ground like a bear balancing on a unicycle.
February 16, 2011
A river of fire between the trees where the sun reflects off the snowpack’s white glass. The deep blue sky is marred only by crows.
February 12, 2011
Flurries. The chittering call of a Cooper’s hawk; the small birds continue feeding. A strangled cry. Finally, the jay calls like a jay.
February 11, 2011
Sun mediated by a thin wash of cloud lays soft stripes of light atop the snow, as if the air were full of pollen, as if it were August.
February 8, 2011
Last night’s wet snow sticks here and there—blank spaces on the wind’s map. One of the 50-odd bergamot heads still wears a toque blanche.