6:04 a.m. (sunrise two minutes earlier than yesterday). 25 degrees, wind NW 8 mph. Sky: pastel blue and gray clouds, rose highlights; contrast quickening. Trace of snow. Last night, heavy pruning wind, limbs down, weak trees leaning. Intermittent streams: open and flowing (for the moment). Permanent streams: upper, high and clear and loud; lower, bubbling under a sag of now frozen snow. Yesterday, the upper layer of running meltwater; today, the long, narrow path of ice. Wetlands: the main drainage channel, snaking through the snow-bound marsh, black and open; once languid and secretive, now swollen and unequivocal, overwhelms the derelict beaver dam. Beneath my feet, in soft mud, an unseen world begins to stir. Pond: tractionless and treacherous, leashes in the way. Dogs and I slip, slide, spill like gangly cartoon characters. Twelve months of serious comfort-eating has an unintended benefit . . . I bounce right up, unbroken.
Three crows in the compost pile, a meal of eggshells and stale bagel. Two roistering jays chase each other through an apple tree, manically zip from branch to branch; short hops, quick flushes. Around and around, lacing the tree with invisible threads of desire. Brown creeper, an animated spec of bark, sprays thin-notes from ash, more a carol than a whisper, barely audible. Dove in the front yard, picking grit from the driveway, waits until the last moment, then scissors the air; the sweet sound of flight. Everywhere: chickadees, titmice, both nuthatches, both small woodpeckers make themselves known, a blending of sound, the synthesis of disparate worlds compelled by similar ambitions. Pileated, one volley, an uphill roll out of the hemlocks
Yesterday afternoon, on a small parcel of the water-logged front yard: two crows and lonely robin picked small earthworms out of matted grass. Robin rushed, probed, tweezed with a gilded bill. I stood by the bedroom window, pedestrian songbird in view, the solace of russet breast and noble posture—chest out, shoulders back, erect as an upper-case "I." Dashed headlong into spring.
I've begun singing, "When the Red-Red-Robin Comes Bob-Bob-Bobbin' Along"--my three children, now in their 50's, remember how we sang the seasons in, and the robin meant spring. Unabashedly smiling and very glad my children never outgrew their love for this song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc95FaqWKJA