trucks

Through driving snow, our neighbor is out plowing the road. The plow’s hydraulics whine like a sled dog. Tire chains scrabble at the ice.

Fog. In the absence of the usual noise from quarry and factories, I can hear every grunt and groan of the trucks jake-braking on I-99.

The sun slowly dims in the whitening sky. Soft taps of a woodpecker. The flashing orange light on the roof of the meter reader’s truck.

Over the rumbling of an oil truck, the cry of a gull far from the sea. I go to the edge of the porch and look: a V of gulls […]

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.

A red-bellied woodpecker yammers from tree to tree, all around the yard. A builder drives by with nothing in the bed of his truck.

On a dark, rainy morning, the flashing orange light on the meter reader’s truck. A heron flies over the house—its long, skinny legs.

Traffic noise from over the hill is deafening—the icy snowpack has become a sounding board. In the tulip tree, four slow, amorous squirrels.

The distant gargle of compression release engine brakes. Dark clouds moving very slowly, as if deliberating where to drop their rain.

Up in the woods, one witch hazel has already leafed out—a green flame. The rumble of a pickup approaching then failing to appear.

My brother’s gray truck parked out front makes the house seem diminished and sad, like a boat stranded miles from the sea.

No wind, but some slight motion of the air brings the sound of trucks and the sour smell of sewage up the hollow. The first drops of rain.

Traffic through the gap is loud this All Saints Day morning. Sunrise reddens the western ridge, and a thin mist rises from the snow.

The woods are more open by the day. Three croaks from overhead: raven. The electric company’s line crew arrives, red flags on their truck.