Cold and quiet but for the stream’s gurgle. Bare limbs are pale in the half-strength sun, as if they’d all been barked clean by a porcupine.
stream
Fog and rain. The stream runs brown, as if to match the woods and meadow. The pink flamingo in my garden is looking distinctly out of place.
Cold and overcast, and the stream still in spate. Some bird wheezes in the treetops like a small bellows or a cheerleader for the wind.
When the rain finally slackens off, I can hear a vireo, goldfinches, the catbird, a train horn, and the throaty roar of a well-fed creek.
In the cold rain, a winter wren forages in the mud beside the creek, chirping excitedly and bobbing up and down on spring-loaded legs.
The sun fades as the sky turns paler blue. I close my eyes to listen to the creek—after rain, like a room full of whispered conversations.
In the steady rain, a winter wren sings his summer song at the woods’ edge; on a log over the creek; in the heart of the gold-budded lilac.
I bask in the sun, listening to the creek’s borborygmi. In my last dream before waking, it had grown huge and thunderous as an angry god.
Male cardinals bathe side-by-side in the stream, then resume chasing. A jay perches in a dogwood bush shaking the water from his wings.
A fresh half-inch of snow, now beginning to blow off the trees. The stream is still loudly eulogizing Tuesday’s rain.
In the holiday silence, a pileated woodpecker hammering a high-pitched snag is the loudest thing. The stream gurgles. Distant church bells.
The stream’s dark thread. A jay pierces it with his bill three times. The scarlet oak I planted so long ago is flying all its red flags.
The barberry beside the stream is turning from the inside out: under a green cloak, salmon pink, blood-red beads, the hurdy-gurdy of a wren.
A silver-spotted skipper flies back and forth in front of the porch a dozen times. A grackle comes in croaking for a drink from the creek.