Spring snow:
the night before, I woke
to the sound of swans
Spring snow:
the spicebush outside my window
captures more & more of the sky
Spring snow:
one mourning dove adds
an extra half-note
Spring snow:
the soft ground sinks
under my boots
Spring snow:
last year’s stalks of Oswego tea
don fresh caps
Spring snow:
pressed under glass
the last goldfinch whistle
slowly solidifies
into earwax
untroubled by looters
who choose flashier artifacts
from this dilapidated museum
close to closing time
in one diorama the leaves
are already withering
in another, farmers turn played-out
soil toward the sun
which is kept in a separate
display case on the mezzanine
right above the blowhole
of a great blue whale
north has lost its allure
to the great unsettling
mist lingers later in the day
storms smell like the tropics
the sun cedes ever more
to thieving ravens
and shimmering on a far shore
that magnetic field
traveling so light
even the songs stay behind
but home has grown
beyond elaboration
mountains don brighter plumage
berries ferment like sunsets
first a mellow burn
then the whole of the night sky
My favourite ridgetop tea-drinking spot is quieter each time I visit. Gone (or hiding while they molt) are the nesting tanagers and warblers. A wood pewee still calls, and a blue-headed vireo interjects at one point, but that’s about it. A nearby black gum has begun to color up, anticipating early migration and the need for signal flags saying FREE LUNCH.
fog walker
the millipede’s carpet
of legs
wren wiping his bill
on the ridgeline of the roof
his mate already brooding
on a second clutch
the first clouds always
look innocent enough
until they open
their rainy mouths
catbird singing out
instructions for assembly
a deer sneezing
from her day bed in the weeds
this is how one gauges
one’s aptitude for silence
in Figure 1 we can see
how the trend lines wander
invasive slug
the wood pewee bending
his one note
cool morning
the sun catches a spider
patching holes
Mind the gap they said
and I didn’t. There’s
a storm wind but
no storm. Children
play in the distance
or maybe fight. Don’t
mind me I murmur to a deer
trotting past while I type
this on my phone standing
still as a tree at dusk
just vibrating a little
from a Swainson’s thrush
on his yearly trip north.
I’m mindful that everything
human in this hollow
comes from the gap
Standing outside my front door on this rainy night is the closest thing to a son or daughter I’ll ever have: an eastern red cedar tree, which I found and transplanted when it was one or two years old back in 1993, and has since grown into a bit of a monster, towering over the house. The old place in Maine where we lived till I was five had a number of juniper bushes in the former pasture, where I used to play a lot, and I think that’s what appealed to me about having a closely related species right by the door. And sure, I knew it would turn into a tree rather than a bush, but I still thought it would stay on the small side. It hasn’t — much to the delight of roosting songbirds. I have to prune branches that rub against the roof, but still, on stormy nights, I hear it thump, thump, thumping against the house.
through gaps in the hills
a river of fog
and me here on this wren’s powerline right-of-way
eating lowbush blueberries
It’s not every year we get snow in dogwood season. This particular year, the wild weather simply adds to the impression that the world is completely out of whack.
spiderweb
catching snowflakes
their little spikes
Marooned in our homes, tempers fray. We wonder how long this will go on, worry about finances and food shortages. I watch a pair of scarlet tanagers—treetop birds—reduced to feeding near the ground and foraging for invertebrates in the creek.
redder
than our open mouths
tanager
But spring is always a puzzle: the innumerable ways that spikiness blossoms and leaves us.
former field
the ruffed grouse makes a drum
out of thin air
yellow-bellied sapsucker
tapping
its true name