A dark sky at dawn with one bright gash. As it eases shut, an icy breeze springs up. The stream gurgles softly in its sleep.
stream
Bitter cold with a wind. The happy sounds of juncos coming down to drink from the spring’s thin trickle. Overhead, a faint wash of pink.
Clouds like a thick, gray quilt. The creek has sunk to a whisper, and the threadbare snowpack crackles like wax paper under the squirrels’ feet.
Fine snow slowing to a stop by sunrise and resuming 45 minutes later. It’s quiet enough to hear what the creek is saying both before and after it travels under my yard.
Gray and still, except for the creek’s trickle. A squirrel dangles from a low branch of the springhouse tulip tree, trying in vain to tear off a strip of bark.
The wind has dropped, leaving a dusting of snow, and the sky is a patchwork of white and gray. A rifle booms from down-hollow. The creek gurgles on.
Cold and mostly clear at mid-morning. The small hole down to the stream that flows under my yard is rimmed with hoarfrost, and emits a quiet gurgle.
An autumnal sunrise, with crisp air and the creek full of voices, bracken browning in the yard, and the walnut leaves experimenting with carotenoids.
Out before dawn, I find moonlight in my chair. A song sparrow sings one phrase, possibly without waking up. A quiet trickle from the spring.
Dawn comes during a break in the rain, building from one lone cardinal to a phoebe singing contest to a mob of crows. From the pipe under the road, a winter wren’s soft cascade.
Dark and overcast at dawn. The creek has subsided—a hubbub rather than a roar. The cardinal who roosts in the red cedar next to the house calls once at 6:03 and goes back to sleep.
Thick fog brightening in the east. Over the roar of the creek, a phoebe’s small, inexhaustible engine.
In the pre-dawn darkness, nothing but the sounds of rain and water. A low rumbling comes from the hole in my yard that leads down to the stream just before it emerges into a spring.
Rain. Every ditch runs with whitewater. Behind the bright forsythia, a gray wall of fog swallows the trees. Nevertheless, a wren.