Poor Will's Almanack: December 10 - 16, 2019

I wander into the fields and woods this soft and cloudy morning. Clover is keeping the paths green, along with some dandelions, some plantain. Wind rustles the dry grass and the brittle leaves. I can hear distant crows but no other birds for the first miles. Then the whinny of a robin as though it were frightened or had been attacked. Craneflies follow me up into High Prairie. Moss is still bright beside me, becomes the dominant green in the woods. A few red raspberry branches and a bank of honeysuckles keep their leaves. Nettles, protected by wild roses, grow back in the valley. Teasel is dark and stiff in the dull goldenrod fields. The fruits of the Osage tree are all yellow on the ground. The lichens lie on the rocks, pale greens and pastels. Then I watch the landscape down the valley: bands of grays and browns above a sky of stratus clouds strangely glowing from the hidden sun. The trees are black, pasture chartreuse: a cross section of the winter, veins of this particular time. On