5:05 a.m. 33 degrees, wind E 0 mph. More April than June (Back in down and gloved up). Water bodies defined by the clouds that hang over them. Wetland: thick, white, hugs the ground, as though dropped from the sky. Ompompanoosuc River: fuzzy, meandering, barely above the trees. Marshes to the east birth clouds of various dimensions, as well as owls, whose ringing calls authenticate and fracture the morning. Yesterday's shoal of tadpoles bed down in the muck. Frogs hushed by cold. Hummingbirds, fixed to twigs . . . torpid, need a sapsucker more than ever. No flying insects . . . everything stunned by cold, a suicide mission for mosquitos. And, for the moment, I happily disregard ticks.
Pond sheds heat, too . . . long, filaments of moisture that lean east, softening the forest behind them. Wetland sheds a mallard. Seedhead of willows opening; awaiting wind.
Tanager in a driveway oak and blue-headed vireo in ash, both solo, heedless of the temperature one degree from ice. Like Postal Service motto, Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, nothing keeps a red-eyed video from its wearisome rounds sung ad Infinitum; this morning is no exception. Pileated laughs, repeatedly. Hermit thrush, revived by cold sings, voice by Baez, arrangement by Springsteen.
Goshawk hides in unteachable woodland, waiting to express himself, to impinge on another life. A responsible father with three hungry chicks. Yesterday, a neighbor emailed me a photo of the hawk, standing on a heap of turkey six times its size, wings spread . . . mantling. Stiletto talons impaling flesh; feathers scattered across the lawn like an eviscerated pillow. I imagine the rodeo: goshawk bronco-buster. Life ebbing away. Food chain decorum: crystalline and profound.