At first light, some newly toppled tree creaks in the wind. What I’d taken for the dog statue on the far side of the yard swivels its ears.
wind
October 15, 2011
The wind is busy dismantling its favorite instrument. I can now see clear to the ridgetop through the thinning trees—the sky beyond.
October 2, 2011
Colored leaves turn backwards in the cold wind—still the same pale green. A pileated woodpecker’s distant chant.
July 12, 2011
Wind moves in the trees behind the trees, and a small yellow leaf tumbles down from the overcast sky, taking its time to reach the ground.
June 29, 2011
Strange morning: first a 20-MPH gust of wind out of a clear sky whips the treetops, then the dead cherry beside the porch fills with birds.
April 17, 2011
The rain’s stopped, and high winds rearrange the clouds, holes opening and closing as if in a game of chance: guess which one hides the sun.
March 2, 2011
Clear, cold and windy. A turkey vulture slides sideways above the trees, rocking on its rigid wings like a catamaran crossing a rough sea.
February 20, 2011
A wind in the night swept the broom off the porch; I find it in the garden. A thin milk of clouds. The sun’s whiskers slowly disappear.
February 19, 2011
Just audible over the wind: a junco’s chitter. Leaves lift off from the newly melted forest floor and join a harried flock of snowflakes.
February 14, 2011
43F at sunrise—it feels balmy. The trees rock back and forth under a cloudless sky, touching in ways they rarely do, clattering, groaning.
February 8, 2011
Last night’s wet snow sticks here and there—blank spaces on the wind’s map. One of the 50-odd bergamot heads still wears a toque blanche.
January 16, 2011
Bands of blue move east and close just before the sun can enter them. Once, when the wind dies, it’s completely quiet for fifteen seconds.
January 2, 2011
The shadow of my head reflected by the window behind me appears on the railing beside my feet. A south wind slams the corncrib door.
December 28, 2010
Frozen trees rasp in the wind. I think of a song I once heard about a dictator where the fiddler scraped the strings with his fingernails.