Sky gray as the skin of a corpse. An internal combustion engine’s profane orison. Some small bird hammering at the seed of a sunflower.
trucks
December 7, 2019
Distant fire sirens break the silence. A deer hunter drives past in a bright red pickup. I convince myself I’m warm, sitting in the sun.
December 20, 2018
Out before dawn, I watch Venus rising through the trees, bright as a searchlight. The distant gargle of jake brakes from the interstate.
September 28, 2018
Cold and damp. The distant rumble of the heating oil truck’s diesel engine coming up the hollow. Voices of crows. Voices of children.
September 20, 2018
The laboring motor in the septic service truck, pumping out our tanks—I try to hear anything else. The Carolina wren. An electric drill.
December 28, 2017
I can hear a titmouse tapping at a sunflower seed 100 feet away. A truck drives up the unplowed road—the squeak of the snow under its tires.
December 7, 2017
Cold and overcast. The wind eddies around the house, bringing first a few snowflakes, then the distant mechanical gargle of an engine brake.
March 24, 2017
Warm sun and an inversion layer bringing traffic noise from over the ridge. Cardinals and titmice compete with the whine of truck tires.
March 14, 2017
Silence has descended along with the snow—6 inches so far—save for the rumble of snowplows. A squirrel walks on the dry underside of a limb.
January 16, 2017
Heavy frost blurs the difference between snow-free meadow and woods, where a white fur lingers. The distant stutter of a Jake-braking truck.
December 26, 2016
Traffic sounds have returned to the valley: tires whistle, trucks groan. Off in the woods, some large animal crunches through the ice.
October 6, 2016
The flashing light on the meter-reader’s truck emerges from the fog. The meadow is dotted with the white, inverted tents of funnel spiders.
September 1, 2016
A heavy sky, gravid with rain. In the town a mile and a half way, a fire siren—that hortatory wail. Then the ululations of the trucks.
July 21, 2016
Another cool morning. From over the ridge, an inversion layer relays the whine of tires on asphalt and the keening work-songs of trucks.