Bright and cold. Gusts of wind sweep the snow off branches—ghosts among the trees. A jet’s vestigial contrail briefly underlines the sun.
wind
February 16, 2015
Now that the wind has died, I can admire its work: the yard scoured like a salt flat, the stream turned into a canyon with dangerous curves.
January 31, 2015
Clear and very cold. The wind has erased all tracks but its own, and the trees’ etiolated shadows rock back and forth like trauma survivors.
January 22, 2015
Despite the wind, yesterday’s snow still clings to the trees, like the sleep I keep trying to rub from my eyes. A wren’s ascending rattle.
January 9, 2015
Snow swirls past the porch like an old film reel dense with the blemishes of time. Juncos chitter. A downy woodpecker’s light, steady taps.
January 5, 2015
Wind and sun and bitter cold. A faint trace of white on the ground, as if left over from last night’s full moon.
December 25, 2014
The hillside crowd of trees swaying and churning. In the gray sky, blue wounds open. I can hear my mother shouting a greeting to the sun.
December 17, 2014
A stalk of dried grass in the yard resembles a dancer, leaf-limbs vibrating ecstatically in the wind. The sun goes back in and she vanishes.
December 12, 2014
Traffic noise blends with the ridgetop wind to form a single roar. In the thin snow behind my chair, the meandering tracks of a sparrow.
December 10, 2014
Overcast and windy. Two nuthatches descend tree trunks on either side of the road, calling back and forth as they glean in the furrows.
November 28, 2014
Cold and bright. When I open the door to go in, the wind blows a titmouse in with me. It flies from window to window, clawing at the glass.
November 14, 2014
A titmouse taps in the rain gutter, its absurd crest buffeted by the wind. Scattered snowflakes dart this way and that as if on a mad hunt.
November 12, 2014
Overcast and cold. On the south side of the house, an aster is still in bloom, its small constellation trembling in the wind.
November 7, 2014
Over the wind, a faint music, as if from a distant woodwinds section: silhouetted against a cloud, a south-bound V of tundra swans.