Three small flies gather on the top railing, wandering back and forth on the straight white road like lost commuters. Today will be hot.
August 2010
8/30/2010
A gray squirrel nibbles on tansy leaves—how odd!—then comes onto the porch and stares at me from two feet away with dark unreadable eyes.
8/29/2010
As the plane fades in the distance, they return: a towhee, two lethargic vireos, a chipmunk’s water-drip-steady clucks, the garden cricket.
8/28/2010
Cloudless at sunrise except for my puffs of breath. A junco with bright new plumage flies out of the woods and veers past my face, chirping.
8/27/2010
The sound of deer running through the woods, and from over the ridge, that highway whine: we race through the deserts of our own making.
8/26/2010
A lone cedar waxwing sits on the topmost branch of the dead elm, wheezing his high thin call as the sky’s deepest blue fades to daylight.
8/25/2010
Overcast and quiet except for a red-eyed vireo and a male goldfinch, whose head is already beginning to turn green, like rusting bronze.
8/24/2010
In the rainy half-dark, a small white oval shifting and wobbling on the end of a branch: the breast of a hummingbird.
8/23/2010
Windy and cool. One branch of the lilac shivers as a Carolina wren conducts a thorough investigation, ticking loudly after each new find.
8/22/2010
A blue-gray gnatcatcher drops into the dead cherry and begins to forage, singing its small hoarse note. Beads of rain wobble but don’t fall.
8/21/2010
A banded tussock moth caterpillar is curled up on my shoe—a ball of pale, fuzzy rays. Cue the sun through glasses that badly need cleaning.
8/20/2010
The tall goldenrod’s budding tops continue to expand, extending new arms. I find a penny in my pocket and fling it at the hornets’ nest.
8/19/2010
Cool and clear. The hair I cut last night by moonlight, leaning over the rail with the electric clippers, still shines silver in the weeds.
8/18/2010
Overcast and cool, with the beeping of quarry trucks. A pair of cardinals land above the dry creek bed, exchange a few chirps, and fly off.