Last night the air was warm, but the stars gleamed like steel. This morning it’s overcast and cold. New splashes of yellow in the birches.
September 2009
9/15/2009
I sit admiring the stillness and symmetry of a brown moth on the freshly painted white rafters—a moth that turns out to be, alas, a leaf.
9/14/2009
Sitting under the portico while the paint dries on the porch. The crickets sound different here. A phoebe calls for the first time in weeks.
9/13/2009
Neighboring chipmunks locked in a chipping contest: when one falters, the other pauses, too. The crowns of the oaks slippery with sunlight.
9/12/2009
Rain starts almost imperceptibly, thickening from shimmer to mist to curtain. Early goldenrod and white snakeroot are both fading to brown.
9/11/2009
Riddle me this: Because of the heavy acorn crop, next summer we will see more roses. And this: the oak forest moves north on corvid wings.
9/10/2009
I glance up from my reading to meet the sun’s bleary eye. A squirrel bent into a ball, dangling tail curled left, pauses—a semicolon pose.
9/9/2009
The doe is turning from the top down, like a mountain: summer’s red has receded into her legs and belly. On the fawn, just five faint spots.
9/8/2009
Every overcast morning is overcast in its own way. This one’s dull and slow, a gray squirrel on a small dead tree licking its genitals.
9/7/2009
Labor Day. A spring peeper at dawn. In the great silence, I can hear the approach of what will turn into drizzle: the thinnest of whispers.
9/6/2009
Overnight, two maples on the far side of the road have begun to go orange. And between me and them, a small pale spider with her tiny prey.
9/5/2009
From the rummaging of some small bird of passage, a shower of yellow walnut leaves into the yellow yard, the tall Solidago. A catbird mews.
9/4/2009
Thin fog at dawn. From the woods’ edge, the familiar two-syllable call of a scarlet tanager sounds suddenly very much like goodbye.
9/3/2009
Focused on the view, I never noticed how the porch posts framing it lean several degrees to the right. I wonder if my hearing also is askew?