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
Fog on snow. The hidden full moon’s false dawn obscures the real one. Distant traffic is drowned out by the sound of rushing water. | Continue reading
Fog blurs the difference between the white below and above, the trees reduced to gray wraiths as a Carolina wren sings for the break of day. | Continue reading
Damp and cold. Snowmelt drips from the roof. A blue jay makes a half-hearted hawk-scream and fall silent. | Continue reading
As below, so above, the trees marooned in a flat whiteness no less absolute than that of a blank page, albeit one navigated by squirrels. | Continue reading
Between moonset and dawn, a dark hour filled with the sound of freight trains. I hold my head still to watch Venus slip through the trees. | Continue reading
I’m grateful to the snowflakes for mostly not landing on the pages of my book and sailing on by. Am I fully acclimated to the winter now? It’s disconcerting how much the darkness has re… | Continue reading
Deep cold. The sound of wind mingling with the dull howl of distant jets. Two dead leaves pick this moment to finally let go and twirl up through their small oak into the clouds. | Continue reading
First light. White lines crisscross the dark edge of the woods: snow on trees. I stick my hand out to feel it falling, flakes as fine as dust melting into my palm. | Continue reading
A gray squirrel on a gray morning, having tunneled through snow and frozen earth to disinter a black walnut, squats on a dead limb of a dead maple, gnawing at the rock-hard shell. | Continue reading
Five degrees and breezy. The creek still gurgles, low and slow, with Venus through the trees flickering like a candle in the wind. | Continue reading
Snow falling at dawn—fine flakes at first, then larger and faster as the darkness subsides, as if they’re emissaries for the day. A chickadee sings his wistful, two-note song. | Continue reading
7F/-14C at dawn. The rifle-crack of a tree with ice in its heartwood. I peer like some ancient mummy through my layers of cloth. | Continue reading
Snow at first light—a silent mob of moving shadows, pecks on my cheek—then as dawn approaches, the slow differentiation of black and swirling white. | Continue reading
After a night of snow and rain, trees rock and clatter under orange clouds. The roof drips. Scattered flakes swirl past. | Continue reading
The Carolina wren who sleeps above my laundry-room door forms a one-bird cheering section for the sunrise. Then the cloud-lid closes, and only the creek still sings. | Continue reading
Under pink clouds, the harsh back-and-forth of ravens echoing off the icy snowpack. The creek has subsided a little but still hosts a full chorus of watery voices. | Continue reading
Snow falling so fast at sunrise you can hear it: a sort of high soughing as millions of special snowflakes hurtle into the oblivion of each other. | Continue reading
A gray squirrel in heat waits for her escort to chase off a rival suitor before resuming their game of follow-the-leader, now much more slowly, across the crusted snow. | Continue reading
Gray above, white below: a snowbird hops atop five inches of fresh snow, noshing on goldenrod, snakeroot, and stiltgrass seeds, leaving lines of little arrows pointing backwards. | Continue reading
Heavy gray clouds, and a breeze from the east: storm coming. Something flushes all the doves from the spring—a euphony of bright notes. | Continue reading
One last glimpse of the crescent moon before it’s swallowed by clouds. The typewriter sound of squirrel claws on bark, chasing. It’s cold. | Continue reading
Snow flurries at sunrise. My canvas sleeves become collections of daggers and asterisks—a short-lived museum of the moment. | Continue reading
After another cold, windy night, might the ground finally be frozen? A tree wails in the darkness. From the ridgetop, long sighs. | Continue reading
An icy breeze curls around the house and makes the big dial thermometer squeak and moan against the house: five degrees below freezing. The whistle of a mourning dove’s wings. | Continue reading
Overcast and quiet before dawn. A half-inch of fresh snow sticks to everything, glowing faintly in the light of a hidden moon. | Continue reading
The cloud ceiling briefly switches to faint pastels: sunrise. One yammering nuthatch and, from down in the hollow, a screech owl’s soft trill. | Continue reading
Overcast at dawn. A cold kiss—snowflakes in the air. When the sunrise comes, it’s only evident in the caws of crows. | Continue reading
Mostly clear at sunrise, but clouds gather in the east before the sun tops the ridge. A pair of ravens go over with a new word: two syllables, starting hoarse and ending clear. | Continue reading
Sun almost shining through the fog. A winter wren warbles from the marsh. Up by the garage, bluebirds. It feels like March, with December light. | Continue reading
Thick fog and silence. A song sparrow pipes up just before sunrise. It gets darker again. A bluebird warbles as the rain resumes. | Continue reading
Rain tapering into mist and drizzle. A squirrel finds a black walnut next to the road, swiftly de-husks it and carries it away. The sky brightens. A goldfinch lisps a single note. | Continue reading
Heavily overcast, with nothing to distinguish the sunrise from any other moment, soft and gray as old felt in the nearly complete absence of human noise. | Continue reading
A few degrees above freezing, heavily overcast, and dead quiet apart from the spring’s low gurgle. A bluebird sings two notes and lapses back into silence. | Continue reading