A cold wind at sunrise. Daffodils nod, while the forsythia shakes its yellow fingers in a vaguely apotropaic gesture. Hard frost on the way.
wind
February 25, 2012
Snow blows sideways and rises from the ground in snaky spirals. A Carolina wren dances on top of the stone wall like a wind-up toy.
February 23, 2012
A killdeer’s song drifts down from high overhead, and to the south, the piping of a ragged flock of geese struggling against the high winds.
February 12, 2012
The wind moves snow back and forth across the ground like a restless sculptor. Trees creak and groan: a regular machinery of discontent.
January 31, 2012
Walnut tree branches behind the house rock by turns, as if from the passage of some large animal, but it’s only this warm-blooded wind.
January 18, 2012
Trees rock and sway, infiltrated by snowflakes flying this way and that. From deep in the lilac, the wandering warble of a tree sparrow.
January 13, 2012
Wind-driven snow; I draw my hood tight. On the wall behind me, the thermometer’s big red arrow inches left like a clock running backward.
December 28, 2011
Snow blowing sideways. As the wind changes direction, two dead trees fallen onto the living take turns complaining: first eeee, then ahhh.
October 16, 2011
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.
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.