Dead leaves rise from the forest floor and go scuttling back and forth in small flocks. A few ascend to the sky—just beginning to clear.
wind
Each morning arrives with a fresh coat of snow, but today’s is threadbare. For a minute or two, the wind is whiter than the ground.
Small flakes sting my cheek; ice-bound trees squeak and groan. From the feeder up at my parents’ house, the happy chatter of snowbirds.
New snow blown about by a bitter wind. A red-tailed hawk struggles to gain altitude, mocked by a blue jay doing its best hawk scream.
Titmouse, chickadee, wren. I squint into the sun. The bitter wind rattles the cover of the magazine beside me—which, I notice, is Rattle.
The wind that shook the house all night has dwindled to an occasional gust. An inch of snow plasters the porch and the east sides of trees.
Silence broken only by the wind for many minutes, until the fire alarm goes off in town: once, twice, three times rising from moan to wail.
The monotonous chant of a tufted titmouse. Clouds move in and seed the wind with small, round snowflakes, giving it another way to bite.
A fresh inch of snow. In the weak sunlight and bitter wind, three juncos huddle in a barberry bush above the stream, taking turns to drink.
An icy wind; the ground has regained its white quilt. It’s as if the thaw never happened—except for the odd leaf skittering across the snow.
Sun-glare on the snow; a bitter wind. A crow mob up on the ridge disperses, only to return a half hour later to whatever they’re tormenting.
Christmas has come like a vengeful spirit, roaring on the ridgetop, plastering the weather sides of trees with snow. A Carolina wren’s song.
The snow nearly vanished overnight, and the bare patches of moss are shockingly green. The pines sigh and whisper like strangers at a party.
Snow! Five inches of dry powder, and a light breeze sweeping it from the treetops: gauzy, luminous curls like falling smoke.