7:24 a.m. 23 degrees, wind NNW 9 mph, raw and oceanic, shrieks through
pines. Sky: overcast, a half-light somewhere between nautical and civil
twilight. Permanent streams: harmonizing with the weather, no change from
yesterday or the day before. If I rearrange rocks, they will carry a
different tune. Wetlands: colors dull, cold wind sharply out of the north
bends reeds, stirs pines, spindly and agitated. I know what to expect and
face the wind like a chickadee. Pond: feeder stream is frozen shut, black
tail docked by ice. Deer, like a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design,
exhibits exceptional artwork. Shapes like half-filled balloons unspooled
across the surface. New tracks loop through old, sensuous and appealing.
Why would a deer wander on the pond at night, supervised by a waning moon
and peek-a-boo stars?

Lone red-breasted nuthatch chronically tooting in the pines. No crows or
ravens. Eleven jays at the feeder. No sign of the great horned owl last
night or this morning.

Chickadees, however, everywhere and busy, diligently and merrily picking
through pine bark. Chatting up a storm. Anchored in the *here and now* like
Old Testament prophets, their world unconstricted, unrestricted, unmoored
from our chaos and rubble . . . flowers with thousands of hopeful petals.