Approaching a new year

At least two of the past three days, a hawk has stooped on the birds at our feeder. With the bitter cold, we had bigger crowds than usual. The first time all I saw was a dark shadow promptly followed by the disappearance of the songbirds and woodpeckers. This morning I saw the dark gray(?) back of what I think was a peregrine, but it may have been a different species, perched on the feeder hanger. After a quick Google check, I took down the feeders. The reasoning is the birds will disperse and the hawk will move on to more promising hunting territories. Someone neglected to brief the songbirds. They’re all over the deck looking for the feeders. If we continue to have crowds on the deck, I figure I may as well put the feeders back up. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

bird tracks make for slim pickings for hawks

Photo by J. Harrington

We took advantage of yesterday’s and today’s warmer weather to get some of the rough edges of the driveway cleaned up and much of the road snow droppings scraped and brushed off of the garage floor. Only 83 days until spring equinox next year. Snow season in our North Country extends well beyond that but by that time of season it melts pretty quick, usually.

The bulbs in the planter I got for Christmas seem to like their new home. The soil is beginning to swell and a couple of teeny, tiny shoots of green are barely visible. It’s very pleasing to have a spouse who frequently knows what I want and need better than I do. I’m looking forward to a taste of spring before we get close to the real thing.

New Year's Poem

By Margaret Avison

The Christmas twigs crispen and needles rattle

Along the window-ledge.

             A solitary pearl

Shed from the necklace spilled at last week’s party

Lies in the suety, snow-luminous plainness

Of morning, on the window-ledge beside them.   

And all the furniture that circled stately

And hospitable when these rooms were brimmed

With perfumes, furs, and black-and-silver

Crisscross of seasonal conversation, lapses

Into its previous largeness.

             I remember   

Anne’s rose-sweet gravity, and the stiff grave

Where cold so little can contain;

I mark the queer delightful skull and crossbones

Starlings and sparrows left, taking the crust,

And the long loop of winter wind

Smoothing its arc from dark Arcturus down

To the bricked corner of the drifted courtyard,

And the still window-ledge.

             Gentle and just pleasure

It is, being human, to have won from space

This unchill, habitable interior

Which mirrors quietly the light

Of the snow, and the new year.

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