An icy breeze curls around the house and makes the big dial thermometer squeak and moan against the wall: five degrees below freezing. The whistle of a mourning dove’s wings.
wind
Well below freezing, with a half-inch of snow on the ground and a wind that keeps turning the pages of my book. The sun appears for a second or two through a gray eyelid of cloud.
Wind seasoned with drizzle in the pre-dawn darkness. Between gusts, the distant whine of tires. A tree limb cracks, but no crash.
Gray and windy. The cedar tree moans against the house. A tulip poplar seed capsule comes spinning in and lands on my shoulder.
Breezy and warm. With each gust of wind, a flotilla of leaves sets sail from the big tulip tree, as the sun ascends a ladder of clouds.
After a windy night, the forest is looking decidedly threadbare in its coat of many colors, illuminated each time the sun finds a hole in the clouds.
Windy and cold. In the wall of leaves at the woods’ edge, the first few fragments of what will be my winter sky.
Cold wind and rain, belied by all the cheerful yellow starting to move from the goldenrod up into the trees at the woods’ edge.
A warm wind before dawn brings a feeling of dread for the coming week. The sound of a raccoon flipping rocks in the creek.
Drizzle in the wind even as the sky brightens. Small patches of blue appear and disappear. A yellow leaf spirals down into the yard.
Crystal-clear for the first time since the trees leafed out. A breeze riffles through them—shifting curtains of light and shadow.
A dozen dead leaves circle the yard as the clouds’ bellies turn orange. A phoebe calls once, sotto voce, from a branch above the creek.
As above, so below—the ground the same white as the cloud ceiling. My thick hat excludes all but the sound of wind and birds and a train horn’s dissonant chord.
The ground is once again armored in white. Gusts of wind materialize like minor demons, treetops crashing together, dropping dead limbs.