Saturday May 23, 2009

Dave Bonta May 23, 2009

The lilacs are fading fast. Where did the spring go? A hummingbird moth pays court to the dame’s-rockets—the new avatars of purple scent.

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Cloudless and cool. I wonder idly about the target shooter a couple of miles away, their preferred pronouns. A fly walks the rim of my mug. …

Overcast and cold. One by one the birds fly down to the stream, hop around, drink, fly up, and sing. Snowflakes blow past. A tree groans. …

Pileated woodpecker drumming in a snowstorm—so loud, so outrageously red—here and gone. While the wet, methodical snow doesn't miss a twig. …

A flock of Canada geese somewhere in the clouds like a ghost army led by rusty bugles. A speeding white car emerges from the fog. …

Warm and clear. As the morning wears on, the traffic noise from over the ridge diminishes, leaving only the field sparrow's ascending song. …

A few degrees above freezing. Just inside the woods' edge, three chipmunks in full mating frenzy race back and forth across the snow. …

Is it my imagination, or do the juncos seem especially restless this morning? The distant roar of a military jet. A pileated taps on an oak. …

Nuthatch calls to nuthatch, wren to wren, but the generator roars to nobody. I keep seeing what could be a chipmunk out of the corner of my eye. …

Large gnats drift back and forth in front of the porch and a fly wanders the rim of my laptop. Two Cooper's hawks chatter up in the woods. …

Snow has turned all the lower limbs into wide white feathers, but treetops are bare against the blue. From somewhere in between, the hawk. …

The white field is striped with tree shadows like a map of the Midwest, blue highways all running parallel. It's impossible not to get lost. …

A warm morning—53°F. A Cooper's hawk calls, a screech owl trills, but the squirrels go on rummaging through the leaf litter. I spy a gnat. …

A red sunrise. Loud rending sounds as a gray squirrel peels bark from the dead elm tree in the yard, hanging upside-down like a nuthatch. …

The Morning Porch