Thursday May 15, 2008

Dave Bonta May 15, 2008

Cloudy and cool. A tanager’s plucked string; no glimpse of scarlet. Where are they off to, the hummingbirds that keep zooming past my porch?

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Four waterfowl fly in a line high overhead, silent in the blue. Someone in the next yard says, Today is going to be a really boring day. …

The sun comes out. A green shield bug flies in and lands on a porch column like a freelance leaf. I'm reminded to check when the equinox is. …

Foggy and still, save for the occasional crash-down of a black walnut. The dog I'm sitting noses through the long grass, inhaling deeply. …

Too dark to identify the small birds darting through the forest canopy. A walnut dislodged by a squirrel thumps hard against the ground. …

The rising sun illuminates old spiderwebs in the eaves, littered with insect body parts. Below, the flamboyant bones of dame's-rocket. …

A black ichneumon wasp climbs the white porch column, wings twitching like an ill-fitting suit. The lawnmower sound of a propeller plane. …

Loud wingbeats as the shadow of a raven crosses the yard. A buck gingerly lowers his antlered head to the stream. …

1:15 a.m. Thinking there's something chewing on the leaves outside my window, I get the flashlight and discover rain. Time for bed. …

A morning so clear, the half moon looks close enough to touch. A squirrel still spooked by some long-gone predator has yelled itself hoarse. …

The valleys must be brimming over with fog. Clouds rise behind both ridges, but it's blue overhead: a white-bread sandwich filled with sky. …

One of the autumn grasses beloved of Basho blooms an alien red at the edge of the yard. Sudden jumbled music from a V of non-migrant geese. …

In the pre-dawn dark, a patch of moonlight appears for a few seconds on the end of the porch. A cricket's one-string fiddle, slow and thin. …

The Morning Porch/Patio