7:18 a.m 32 degrees, wind SSW 8 mph (hums with authority). Sky: in need of
a decongestant. The essence of yesterday, raw and wet, still heavy in the
air. Low cloud ceiling. Blue-white mounds roll through the peach light of
sunrise. Flurries. Night bequeathed an inch of heavy snow, lining hardwood
branches and evergreen sprays, too wet to blow off. Hemlock twigs sag under
the weight, a drop of ice at the end of each soft twig. Gradually, and for
just a moment, the sky whitens—a cream-colored world, top to bottom, fluid
magic. Permanent streams: higher water, lower voice, less ice. Wetlands:
the main channel paved in snow. More white than beige, reeds buckle under
the weight. Across the marsh, jagged conifers, the blackest of green,
outlined in snow, sawtoothed gilding. Pond: freshly basted, otherwise a
reiteration, the repeatable appearance of many yesterdays.

Three lanes of tracks down the middle of the road, coyotes on a mission.
Stop for nothing. *Where are you going? And why have you kept your songs to
yourselves?* Footprints: coyote middle toes slant inward, dogs slant apart.
I follow the coyotes from my driveway to the marsh, where they headed west,
flanked by rushes and cattails, tiptoeing through muck and mire under cover
of night. Dogs, tugging on leashes, urge me to follow. *What do they
know? *From
one side of the road to the other, white-footed mouse tracks cut coyotes'
at a right-angle. A quick crossing. No bold, middle of the road trek. Then,
a second mouse closer to the pond. Gray squirrel tracks in and out of the
woods, follow birds to feeders, from one house to the next. Red squirrel
from one pine to the next.

Minutes after the plowman leaves, my sanded driveway becomes a grit-station
for five doves. Under the feeder, two others peck halfheartedly at seeds
liberated by the agitation of jays, the swirl of chickadees and titmice,
and a single hairy woodpecker—yard birds framed in immaculate white.
Feathers ruffled by south wind. Earth tilting toward February.