I take my eye off the clear sky for a moment and suddenly there are clouds—four streaks beside the moon’s thin frown. Cerulean warbler song.
May 2016
5/30/2016
At the woods’ edge, three yellow hats: iris gone feral. A hummingbird rockets back and forth through the lilac, showing off for a female.
5/29/2016
Exotic dancers of the Lepidoptera have names like Little Wood Satyr and Pearl Crescent. Their underwings bear black suns and crescent moons.
5/28/2016
Despite the heat, the oriole’s enthusiasm is undiminished. The walking onions, like ostriches of fable, are stretching to bury their heads.
5/27/2016
A large leaf-footed bug stalks up and down a porch column, its shadow at its side. Two carpenter bees clash like airborne sumo wrestlers.
5/26/2016
The delicate sneezes of a deer grazing on the thorny canes of multiflora rose bushes. She stretches a hind leg up to rub her nose.
5/25/2016
Warm and hazy. The yard buzzes with native bees pollinating the alien, invasive myrtle. Off in the woods, the glint of old glass.
5/24/2016
The crackle of a grackle. The boosterism of a rooster. The incessant cheer of a vireo. My ears take refuge in the creek, that labile Babel.
5/23/2016
Sun! A gray squirrel noshes on black walnut catkins, then drops deliberately to a thin locust branch five feet below and clings, see-sawing.
5/22/2016
Two great-crested flycatchers foraging in the rain target insects sheltering under leaves. The only dry thing is a cerulean warbler’s song.
5/21/2016
Few bird calls are audible above the hush of rain falling on new leaves. White lilac and bridal wreath flower heads droop, turning brown.
5/20/2016
The warmest morning in weeks. The bracken in my yard that the deer mowed down has raised defiant fists. A red-eyed vireo drones on and on.
5/19/2016
On a crystal-clear morning, the whinnying cry of a red-bellied woodpecker seems full of angst, and a jay’s rasping call—pure frustration.
5/18/2016
A rabbit in the rain eats grass the way I eat ramen, one long strip disappearing into its mouth, drops flying. A hummingbird buzzes my face.