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.
wind
Wind and sun and bitter cold. A faint trace of white on the ground, as if left over from last night’s full moon.
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.
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.
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.
Overcast and windy. Two nuthatches descend tree trunks on either side of the road, calling back and forth as they glean in the furrows.
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.
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.
Overcast and cold. On the south side of the house, an aster is still in bloom, its small constellation trembling in the wind.
Over the wind, a faint music, as if from a distant woodwinds section: silhouetted against a cloud, a south-bound V of tundra swans.
The wind has stripped the treetops of most remaining leaves, flooding them with light. I watch the sine-wave flight of a far-off woodpecker.
Windy and overcast, with a few flakes of snow in the air. Yellow leaves peel off the aspens as I watch. Two ravens croak back and forth.
Through thinning treetops, I spot a red-tailed hawk flapping to gain altitude. Two red oak leaves spiral high over the yard.
Clear and bright, but the wind still blows. The long leaves of the cattails have started to brown, their curled ends bowing toward the west.