Bright blear of a sun in a sky more white than blue. Its light reflecting off the window behind me means I am lit on all sides as I peer down at the first, miniature daffodils still in shade. | Continue reading
Thin clouds gone faintly pink. Under the endless robin song, a winter wren sings burbling accompaniment to the creek. | Continue reading
The sun climbs through bare trees while I’m not looking, lost in blue like the titmouse with his endless diatribe. | Continue reading
The ground is white again, and the trees sway like drunks as small orange clouds scud past. I sample the freezing air through a sunburnt nose. | Continue reading
Time Change Day! I for one welcome our chronological overlords, and I’m out at the new 6:30 just as the weather, too, is making a change, the creek roaring, snowflakes drifting down. | Continue reading
Rain and robin song. The sky darkens. The black birches look dapper in their gray-green suits of lichen. | Continue reading
After a bright sunrise, the clouds move in, one settling among the trees. The creek sounds more sober now, and here and there, the grass is greening up. | Continue reading
An hour past sunrise, bright spots begin appearing in the clouds. A lull in the birdsong. I notice the old lilac’s haze of green buds. | Continue reading
Thick fog that lasts for hours. Sunrise must’ve been that big flock of red-winged blackbirds and grackles crackling and creaking like old doors. | Continue reading
Dripping at dawn has thickened into steady rain by the time I get out of the shower. The robins, cardinals, woodpeckers and wrens seem barely to have noticed. It’s spring. | Continue reading
Another flat-white sunrise, today with the death scream of a rabbit. Crows, woodpeckers. The Carolina wren with his list of demands. | Continue reading
The creek still sings yesterday morning’s rainy tune, but by 8:00 o’clock the uniform white sky has devolved into patches of dark and light. | Continue reading
Rain clouds have settled in among the trees with their bodies like smoke. Wood frogs and forest salamanders must be stirring in their death-like sleep. | Continue reading
At the end of a tunnel of shining twigs, the rising sun. A red-bellied woodpecker whinnies from the top of a locust tree. The furnace under my house rumbles to […] | Continue reading
Leap Day. The trees sway and clatter; winter is back. A small cloud turns pink. | Continue reading
Fog full of birdsong. I look up from the page to a rumble of thunder that makes the windows shake. | Continue reading
Swans before dawn, their moonlit cries drifting down from over the north end of the mountain. A quiet trickle from the stream. The scent of thawed earth. | Continue reading
Mid-morning with the sun full in my face, listening to the roof drip onto the roof. A chickadee sings his spring song, and a little later, so does the song sparrow. | Continue reading
Red dawn with a moon like a searchlight sinking into the powerline cut. The cardinal debuts a new call with what sounds like a glottal stop in the middle: chee-er, chee-er. | Continue reading
The woods are far more brown than white after yesterday’s warmth. I glance up from my book to a splash of yellow in the clouds, lapsing into another day’s gray. | Continue reading
Foggy at dawn with sound out of the east—the quarry instead of the interstate. Gray-green lichens glow on the rain-darkened trunks of sweet birches all along the edge of the woods. | Continue reading
Overcast at sunrise, but the cloud lid lifts enough for the sun to glimmer through when it crests the ridge. Saturday’s snow is looking threadbare—a disintegrating shroud over the not-yet […] | Continue reading
Cold and mostly clear at sunrise. Long before the sun clears the ridge, the bright red cardinal is tapping at all my windows. | Continue reading
In the rising sun’s slow shadow-play projected onto the snow, sleeping trees drift on a sea of glitter. A visitation of wings. | Continue reading
Cold and still at sunrise. A chipmunk pops up from under the house and scuttles over to the stone wall, where it stops to watch the clouds turn colors. | Continue reading
Through two hats and a hood, the wind’s bitter whisper reaches my ear. Odd moans and creaking sounds issue from the trees, whose dark silhouettes stretch between two absences. Then first ligh… | Continue reading
Patches of blue sky at sunrise. A red-tailed hawk sits in a high oak limb, pale breast half-camouflaged against the snow that fell in the night. | Continue reading
Impossible to distinguish the sound of the ridgetop wind from the rumble of freight trains below. The stars fade. A small high cloud turns pink. | Continue reading
Very cold and still. The clear sky at dawn has gone white. Crows call to crows. The floorboards shiver when my furnace kicks on. | Continue reading
Cold and clearing off for sunrise. From some sheltered spot, a Carolina wren is duetting with the wind. | Continue reading
A filigreed fretwork of wet snow clinging to everything. From the valley, the wail of sirens. The cloud cover thins to a kind of brightness. | Continue reading
Overcast and quiet an hour before dawn. From the spruce grove a half mile away, a barred owl’s single Who. The stench of diesel. | Continue reading
Very still under a bone-white sky. A Carolina wren rummages under the house. In the treetops a gray squirrel takes an improbable leap. | Continue reading
Unseasonably warm and very quiet. Sunrise appears through a rift in the clouds: gold in the east, black in the west. The last five piles of icy snow look as out of place as alien spacecrafts. | Continue reading
A mottled sky half an hour past sunrise. It’s quiet. The dove who was calling at first light, as if it were March already, must’ve gone back to sleep. | Continue reading
Dawn clouds stacked liked a ladder of blood. Chattering nuthatches. A dove’s breathy song sounds far from mournful. | Continue reading
Cold and still all the way to the stars, which are just beginning to fade. A barred owl calls once. The hesitant footfalls of a deer coming down to drink. | Continue reading
Clear and cold, the ground gray with frost. Sunrise reddens the western ridge. A propeller plane fades into the distance. | Continue reading
Sunrise. The resonant drum of a pileated woodpecker. A lone crow hops from perch to perch yelling Hey! Hey! | Continue reading
A song sparrow singing at first light as if it were March already. A quiet trickle from the spring. The moon gapes through the treetops, pale and hollowed out. | Continue reading
Cold and still. Just as the half-moon‘s light begins to fade, a screech owl trills from the pines, as if to prolong the night. | Continue reading
It’s the last overcast dawn for days, they say, so I try to find something to savor in the cold gloom, among the rumbles of distant machines and the one-note whistles of dove wings. | Continue reading
Just past sunrise the sky almost clears, then clouds over again. The thermometer’s black arrow points straight at 32. The mound of plowed slow at the edge of the yard looks lost and abandoned… | Continue reading
Another gloomy dawn, a few degrees below freezing. The sound of an animal returning to its home under my house. Standing up to look, I tip over my mug, and stare at the small puddle of tea as whate… | Continue reading
Overcast and quiet except for the watery chorus. A chipmunk dashes across a patch of snow and disappears under the house. | Continue reading
Dawnish. Wind makes the big dial thermometer squeak and shiver. A flat-tire moon goes in and out of fast-moving clouds. | Continue reading
Day slips in among torrents of rain. The woods are mangy with scattered patches of old snow. The gurgle of a wren. | Continue reading
Meltwater roars in the creek. In the orange glow of sunrise, the cardinals emerge from the juniper tree, singing. | Continue reading