Small clouds rise from the decaying snowpack and drift off through the trees. In the yard, a vole’s tunnel system is beginning to emerge.
voles
Against dark clouds, the white blossoms of shadbush massed at the woods’ edge. A vole breaks cover in the yard: a gray streak.
Weak sunlight. Dead leaves are all a-rustle, rummaged through by squirrels, voles, chipmunks, juncos. The distant cry of a maybe killdeer.
Overcast and cool. Below the porch, a single orange jewelweed flower and a traveling shiver in the grass where a vole is foraging.
Warm, with a clearing sky. The aging snowpack is a map of dark, branching lines: not varicose veins but the tunnels of meadow voles.
Another cold and overcast morning. A meadow vole zips into its burrow beside the stream and a song sparrow flies up with an indignant chirp.
At the base of the stone wall, a raised figure eight where a vole has ventured out, tunneling just under the surface of the new-fallen snow.
New snow on every twig: a strange fur, this fine, dry stuff that forms so far below freezing. A vole rustles in the leaves beside the porch.
The no-longer-drifting snow records moonlit revels: where a vole broke cover, where white-footed mice foraged, where rabbits danced.
A catbird taps at the dining room window—the same glass that taunts the female cardinal. A tiny shadow darts through the grass: meadow vole.
A meadow vole takes an after-death journey into the forest in the jaws of a cat, who holds her head high for once and does not slink.
Drifting snow, just deep enough to provide cover for voles. A snow dervish rises from the road and travels a dozen feet before collapsing.