After hard rain in the early hours, the sky is a patchwork of light and dark. The wail of a freight train is faintly audible above the wind.
train
January 24, 2015
A wet snow has turned the trees Victorian, every last twig edged with filigree. The only sound from the valley is the rumbling of trains.
December 19, 2014
Overcast and dreary. The neighbor’s rooster is drowned out by a train, its air horn blowing an almost perfect minor chord.
November 22, 2014
The low throb of a freight train laboring up the valley. A mossy log at the woods’ edge is lit up by the sun’s reflection in a window.
November 5, 2014
An inversion layer brings freight train and traffic noise to mix with rustling leaves, crow scold-calls, a chipmunk’s metronome. My music.
September 3, 2014
At just half-light, the young rooster in the neighbors’ coop begins to crow. But the distant train whistle still has more depth, more soul.
April 27, 2014
On a cold, clear morning, the calls of birds seem almost crystalline. To say nothing of the whistle of a westbound freight…
February 13, 2014
Sound, like the rest of the weather, is out of the east: plow trucks, slow-moving trains, a dog barking on and on at the falling snow.
December 30, 2013
As daylight gathers, the sky goes from white to gray. A train whistle trailed by its rumble of freight. The distant propellers of a plane.
December 6, 2013
The last of the snow is gone, and the moss that lay under it for a week looks greener than ever. A distant train horn blows a minor chord.
October 2, 2013
Sunny, warm, and quiet except for the distant wail of a locomotive, a phoebe calling at the woods’ edge, a cricket, the rustling of leaves.
September 11, 2013
Warm and humid. The smell of liquid fertilizer drifts up from the valley to the east, and from the west, the sound of trains.
May 27, 2013
Three deer graze in the meadow, ears and tails flapping to keep off the flies. From the valley, a steam locomotive’s lonesome wail.
March 11, 2013
At first light, the wild cries of tundra swans pour down through the clouds. Then silence. The rumbling labor of an east-bound freight.