12.10.18
6:58 a.m.
20 degrees
Petulant nuthatch cranks at me to fill the feeders.
Open water yesterday is frozen today, and yesterday’s ice is
noticeably thicker this morning. The hoarfrost landscape is
dull, but the sun has just risen, and soon the dew will glint and then vanish.
12.12.18
12:28 p.m.
28 degrees
Papyral leaves encased in this new ice
over which I stand with caution,
numbly recalling days when a
dropped puck meant slash, clatter, grunt, dusk.
12.16.18
7:32 a.m.
44 degrees
—Forecast calls for all-day rain
Perhaps yesterday’s hatch was blue winged olives, though I doubt it.
Olives seem too big; these were tiny. And gone today,
nymphs, nearly invisible, making the wren pulling at the sumac
drupes seem gargantuan, the thick slush of the pond planetary.
12.19.18
11:31 a.m.
32 degrees
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
—Dylan Thomas, “Fern Hill”
Perfectly calm day, brilliant sun in a 9/11 sky.
Oh, I know it’s only Wednesday, but today is the day I
named The Day I Understood the Sabbath Ringing Slowly,
deifying the pebbles of the holy streams, the pond settling with one loud crack.
