The slender reed of a white-throated sparrow’s voice trembles in the wind. A hole opens in the clouds, blue and sunrise pink.
wind
Breezy drizzle mixing in with falling leaves—those that twirl, those that spiral, those that somersault, those that glide.
Gibbous moon overhead through a thin veil of fog. A breeze moves through the forest, liberating the night’s rain.
Breezy and overcast at dawn. From up in the woods, the declarative WHO! of a barred owl. The last katydid rattles to a stop.
Breezy with sometime sunshine. A hummingbird’s buzz grows louder as she hovers in front of a window, bill to bill with an unexpected rival.
Breezy and cool. Patches of blue sky begin to appear. The birds are relatively quiet—probably too busy eating after a cold night.
Like green tassels on Victorian lampshades the birch catkins fluttering in the breeze. It’s warm—a perfect day for tree sex.
Trees bend and sway in the wind: how seldom they collide, how little noise they make! A black-and-white warbler wheezes like a pump handle.
Bitter wind. Up in the woods, sun glints off an old jar the frost heaved up. When I go to fetch it, ice colonnades crumble under my boots.
Sunny and warm with high winds, as if March’s proverbial lion and lamb were the same. Trees sway drunkenly. Their dead shed leaves rise up.
An hour before sunrise, the bitter wind says winter but the creek says spring. The moon’s gone flat, but is still as bright as a false dawn.
A few hours into March and the wind starts to gust. On south-facing slopes, scattered splotches of bare ground like an incipient rash.
This is winter as I remember it from my childhood: more than a foot of drifting snow at 20°F. The Carolina wren is singing under the house.
The snowstorm over, it’s quiet, except for the wind. A cardinal shelters in a barberry bush, as red as the berries had been.