Thursday June 05, 2008

Dave Bonta June 5, 2008

A hummingbird lands on the upturned tip of a dead elm branch; the branch doesn’t move a hair. The first open peony lies on its side.

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The corrugated steel roof over the heating oil tanks registers a small shower I might've otherwise missed: soft taps, a scattering of dots. …

After a night of high winds, the forest has several new squeaks and groans, but my light-weight chair hasn't moved. I sit down warily. …

The rain finally stops. In the woods and yard, chipmunks zip back and forth like hyperactive exoparasites on the mountain's glistening pelt. …

Two song sparrows in a singing contest under dark clouds. I try to hear urgency and seriousness in their bubbly notes as the sky opens up. …

The sun going in and out of clouds—a chickadee's shadow vanishes half-way across the yard. I'm struggling to remember the color green. …

The nasal alarm calls of nuthatches, one to the south and one to the north. The sun is a yellow stain on a white tablecloth. A silent raven. …

The sound of a single-propeller plane—a rare thing nowadays—draws my eye to a hawk circling a thermal high over the ridge's glossy snowpack. …

Snow blows sideways and rises from the ground in snaky spirals. A Carolina wren dances on top of the stone wall like a wind-up toy. …

A thumping in the crawlspace under the house and muddy footprints in the snow: the resident woodchuck is in heat. Rain drums on the roof. …

A large red blot has blossomed on the garden's snow. I find tufts of silky brown fur and three drops of blood in a line toward the woods. …

With the sun on my face I turn my eyes into camera lenses, open, shut: half-second negatives of trees, bushes, railing. Remember this. …

A squirrel chased off the bird feeder races all the way to the dead elm in my yard, where it sits perfectly still for the next ten minutes. …

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