Windy and cold. A downy woodpecker works over the dead cherry, sounding like a fast hunt-and-peck typist. A towhee calls from the lilac.
wind
The silhouettes of small birds (goldfinches?) darting through the crown of a black birch as wind and driving rain strip it of leaves.
Leaves turn over in a breeze—a small shock-wave from a far-off storm. A flock of yellow walnut leaves breaks free, fluttering to the ground.
Swarms of spinning maple keys fly this way and that. An indigo bunting bobs up and down in the lilac, swiping his bill against the branch.
The new black cherry leaves, unmarred by any insect, are showing their pale backs to the sky, like hatchling fish unsure of how to swim.
All up the hillside, the glossy leaves of mountain laurel shimmer in the sun and wind. Minute snowflakes from who knows where pelt my cheek.
Censored by wind and distance, a mourning dove’s call retains only the middle notes, like a bell tolling for the long, slow death of winter.
One avatar of spring, despite the snow cover: a turkey vulture comes hurtling over the house, wings tilting crazily in the high wind.
Windy and cold, with a new skim of snow on the ground. Song sparrow and bluebird bubble over with what sounds today like forced cheer.
The bright sun frees a leaf in the yard from a new fur of snow; a cold breeze raises it from the dead and sends it sailing over the house.
Cloudy and cold. From over at the neighbors’, the low rumbling of a large machine and the excited shrieks of children eddy on the wind.
In the cold wind, a gray fish fights against the lilac twig that snagged it: the collapsed remains of a caterpillar tent fallen from a tree.
Three thin continents of drifted snow on the porch floor shape-shift every time the wind picks up, losing a headland, gaining a peninsula.
This isn’t silence but a steady roar, ridgetop wind drowning out everything except for the wren, who translates that agitation into his own.