A yellow tulip tree leaf lies face-down on the porch floor. Nearby, an assassin bug crouches like a martial artist when I move my foot.
August 2016
8/16/2016
Two cabbage whites engage in a dogfight, or possibly a pas de deux. A leaf detaches itself from a lilac branch and turns into a hummingbird.
8/15/2016
Beads of rain that were shining moonlets 10 hours ago are now mere glitter. Night has shrunk to the dark iridescence in a butterfly’s wing.
8/14/2016
Cool and breezy. A fly with a blue abdomen and golden thorax, first spotted yesterday, returns for further exploration of my partner’s knee.
8/13/2016
Warm and humid. The air is redolent with rot and mold. A hummingbird zooms past, almost too fast for the eye to register. My stomach growls.
8/7/2016
Cool and clear. An enormous hairy fly lands on my arm, then my chair. I swat it and it flies off, apparently unhurt. Clouds move in.
8/6/2016
Hard rain for less than a minute followed by an hour of dripping, accompanied by a cricket chorus. Pale soapwort flowers glow in the sun.
8/5/2016
Sunrise. A deer grazes at the woods’ edge. A phoebe perches beside her and makes repeated sorties over her back, snapping up the deerflies.
8/4/2016
The wild garlic has all gone to seed, heads bowed with the weight of their descendants. A tiny ichneumon patrols the porch, wings a-quiver.
8/3/2016
Overcast and cool. The irregular chirps of a cricket in the tall grass. A Canada goose flying over the ridge all alone honks twice.
8/2/2016
Fog glowing sunrise-orange. Sound is out of the east: traffic, freight trains, the crusher at the quarry. A chickadee sings both his songs.
8/1/2016
Sun in the treetops and a raven’s hollow, metallic croak. A fly buzzes through the porch without slowing down.