6:30 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). 18 degrees, wind N 5 mph. Sky: mottled, rich gray-peach in the east and south, fades as I watch, transparent everywhere else. A veneer of sunshine, too thin to melt snow, but thick enough to wake a titmouse, spills down Gile Mountain and into the valley of the Ompompanoosuc, works its way toward the Hollow, the benevolence of daybreak. Freedom of walking. Mount Ascutney, a distant alpine glow, hugs the horizon, too far to contemplate. Permanent streams: deferred melting, the passage of little feet unrecorded. Wetlands: sunlight on parade. In the alders, hung with frost, chickadees calling and chasing, agitation within the flock. In shoreline spruce, two red-breasted nuthatches, rambunctious sprites on a cold morning, chase, call, sing, investigate tufts of lichen and frozen snow. Pick grit. Do everything but linger. Is there a cuter songbird? Above the color of dawn. Below the color of sunrise. Black and white striped face. Longish bill, slightly upturned like Samantha on Bewitched. Pond: snow-surface frozen, a solid crust, like walking on styrofoam. Ice surface bumpy, slippery. Even the dogs need crampons.
After a month disassembling other trees, pileated visits roadside maple yesterday, fresh chips on snow. One crow caws, another crow answers. Then, a third and a fourth. Percussionists take the morning off, woodpeckers quietly feed on comatose insects. Picking under bark, excavating punky wood. Hanging on the suet.
Did you see the wonder of the moon last night? Bright and round as a silver dollar, easing its way across the sky. Hunger moon. Bald Eagle Moon. Snow Moon. Owl saw the moon, called all night. I stood in the yard, in the pale light, under the great arc that moves tides. All night twilight. Soft shadows. The black and white of February. Full moon triggers spawning, ovulation, moves mockingbirds and yellow-throats to sing. The pure joy of endless repetition, our repetition. Every twenty-eight days. You can count on it. A gravitational hostage, Earth's faithful companion, made the snow glow. Made me notice the one-sided relationship.
https://today.law.harvard.edu/fantastic-voyage/
Archibald Macleish, another of my favorites, captured the moon landing in this amazing poem, "Voyage to the Moon". The text can be read here:
https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/baskin/view_image-img=17.php.html
What a wonder--