Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow
Cool and clear. Sunlight pours through a hole in the forest canopy into the crown of a black walnut tree, erasing the difference between green and yellow leaves. A mourning dove calls from the woods’ edge—not the full song, just a kind of two-syllable Wow.
A mourning dove calls from out of the fog, high-pitched and hesitant, as if just learning how to sing. A flower fly is licking my laptop where I rest my wrist.
A small plane with a loud motor is the only thing in the sky besides the sun. In its wake, the distant cooing of a dove. I notice that the dead heads now outnumber the living in my iris patch.
The forsythia is fully in bloom, inconguous yellow against the brown woods—not unlike this apparition of a sun burning a hole through the gray clouds. Kinglets flit through the birches. The mourning dove falls silent.
Gloomy and cold. A mourning dove stays frozen on its branch at the woods’ edge half an hour after the Cooper’s hawk’s failed sortie at the feeders.
Overcast and damp, with the intense green of new leaves everywhere. Two doves moan in different keys. A squirrel carrying a walnut walks down the road out of sight.
Clear at dawn, with the bright crescent moon inching teeth-first through the treetops. A mourning dove plays a downbeat rooster.
An hour after sunrise and the squirrels are mostly back in their burrows. Weak sunlight on a snowfall fine as flour. A mourning dove calls.
Overcast and two degrees above freezing at dawn, the inversion layer bringing traffic noise from the valley to mingle with scattered chirps and the whistles of dove wings.
Very cold and still. Over by the springhouse, juncos are making their happy sounds. A mourning dove moans.
A stray snowflake wanders down from the pink clouds, itself still white. Doves flock to the birdseed on my mother’s back porch—the silvery whistles of their wings.
A clearing wind at dawn, after some much-needed rain. A mourning dove sits placidly on a swaying branch, facing east.
Crystal-clear and cold. A mourning dove calls from the woods’ edge. A small patch of sun appears among the bracken, making a drought-struck frond twice as yellow.
Two hours past sunrise, a scarlet tanager sings unchallenged from a tree in the yard. The sunlight fades in and out. A mourning dove calls in the distance.