A bat swoops past my face—a puff of wind. The interminable whistle of a train creeping toward the crossing. A sliver of moon.
Year: 2008
A patch of a deer-tongue grass a mere three feet from my porch—how come I never noticed it before? Am I too busy to watch the grass grow?
In the almost still air, one long walnut leaf pivots like a hand on a wrist. A tiny caterpillar floats past my face on an invisible tether.
A crashing sound from the springhouse meadow: a pair of bucks chasing each other, frisky as fawns and neck-deep in weeds they do not eat.
Clear sky, 55°F. A cicada and a wood pewee singing at the same time: Sunlight! Shadows! Up in the other house, the phones begin to ring.
Fast-moving showers; the light changes from minute to minute. A distant rumble turns out to be an A-10 Thunderbolt II—our modems are safe.
This time of year, every wood thrush song I hear could be the last. I listen hard. Inside on the table, the covers of paperbacks curl up.
Cool and misty—everything drips. A bumblebee clings to the underside of a bergamot bract; on the topside, an equally motionless ant.
A rare visit from an Acadian flycatcher, straying up from the deep hollow. It hovers above a cherry branch, skimming insects off wet leaves.
A bat lands on the inside end of the porch—right above the moon from where I sit—and crawls rapidly on its elbows toward the nearest crack.
Glancing up from a book about Papua New Guinea, I see a doe and fawn crossing the yard and passing pale as spirits between the dark trees.
Two days ago, I spotted the first red branch of black gum. This morning, in the tops of locust saplings: that transcendent springtime green.
A hummingbird does a quick circuit of the bergamot, then zips across the road to check out the limp orange tubes from yesterday’s daylilies.
Unseen: a crash in the treetops, followed by a ripple of high-pitched squirrel alarm that travels hundreds of yards in a couple of seconds.