Juncos fill the lilac, nearest cover to an unfrozen section of stream. Five or six at a time they flutter down to drink from the dark water.
stream
Tuesday’s rain still roars in the creek and gurgles under the yard. The moss garden has turned mountainous from an orogeny of ice.
Overcast and cool, with the beeping of quarry trucks. A pair of cardinals land above the dry creek bed, exchange a few chirps, and fly off.
A rose-breasted grosbeak flutters up from the creek singing clear, cool notes. A cranefly drifts through a sunbeam, carrying its legs.
A dandelion-seed parachute drifting past the porch shudders, hit by a raindrop. The streambank grass ripples where a chipmunk runs.
A groundhog emerges from the stream and climbs the roadbank. I glance away for a moment and a turkey takes his place, shining like obsidian.
The mayapples next to the creek have opened their umbrellas. We do need rain. Already, the top branches of the crabapple have caught fire.
The song sparrow sings at first light—just once, like an alarm going off. Then nothing but the creek’s quiet conversation for 20 minutes.
A pair of mallards—probably the ones who nest every year in the field—are dabbling in the flooded creek, here, there, like connoisseurs.
12 hours of downpour and the stream’s a torrent, water clear from running off frozen ground. Small clouds rise like spirits from the snow.
Cloudless and cold. Listening to the underground stream gurgle through a hole in the yard, I think about my Chinese teacher from long ago.
Cold—the porch boards pop under my feet. A yearling doe walks by with her fur puffed out. But the stream’s gurgle remains unmuffled by ice.
The predicted icestorm has yet to start. Long minutes pass between the distant noise of engines. A raven croaks. The stream’s slow trickle.
A lowering sky, gravid with bad weather. Across the road, small birds crowd the stream, which makes a hollow gurgle under the icy crust.