Homeboy at Home During Coronavirus

November 5, 2020: Coyote Hollow, Thetford Center, VT

6:27 a.m. 30 degrees, wind N 0 mph. Sky: in the west, a pot-bellied moon chaperones a fleet of pink-trimmed clouds; elsewhere, mist lingers over low spots in the valleys, linear above tributaries, rounded above ponds and marshes. In depressions, relics of snow on the north side of trees and rocks, shaded leaves, limbs, and seedheads. Permanent streams: no change in current or melody; sans ice. Wetlands: lightly frosted reeds, dissipating fog. Noisy blue jays commute north, against the flow of vehicular traffic, which has yet to recover from the pandemic—likely to my sunflower feeders, where they'll join an aberrant bobwhite, seventeen turkeys, a dozen doves, and the fluidity of chickadees, nuthatches, titmice, juncos, woodpeckers. Pond: mostly closed by a skin of ice, not thick enough to support thought. Three mergansers, two females and an immature male swim in tight circles on the north end, freedom circumscribed by limited open water. 

I walk through a cold tunnel of nuthatches, the dominant woodland broadcast—a post-election fanfare under the compassion of heaven. For me, the toy horn chorus a celebration, a message of tolerance and forgiveness, of hope for a rickety world. Upbeat in the pines, chickadees contribute. Robins, however, nowhere to be found. A lonely raven below an anxious sky keeps to himself. Pileated rakes the Hollow, a loud, vibrant proclamation, a chuckling boundary marker, an audible locator. Maybe he’s laughing at himself . . . I do during times of unmitigated stress.