June 2009

Tuesday June 30, 2009

Dave Bonta June 30, 2009 1

Just inside the woods’ edge, three mushrooms weather the downpour, umbrellas for no one. The soaked bark of a maple turns patchy blue.

Monday June 29, 2009

Dave Bonta June 29, 2009

Wood thrush, when you go back to Honduras, don’t just forage in the campo. Sing like you do here. Let them know how we mourn.

Sunday June 28, 2009

Dave Bonta June 28, 2009

The pasture rose in front of my wall bears two white blossoms: bindweed raising its flared trumpets to the white sky. The smell of rain.

Saturday June 27, 2009

Dave Bonta June 27, 2009

The red climbing rose is just coming into bloom, but it’s the garlic tops I’m admiring, those coiled green snakes with the heads of birds.

Friday June 26, 2009

Dave Bonta June 26, 2009

Bright sunshine after a night of thunderstorms. Four deer—two does and two fawns—run through the steaming woods.

Thursday June 25, 2009

Dave Bonta June 25, 2009

Beside the springhouse, the twittering zoom of a hummingbird’s courtship dive: from sunlight into cattail shadows and back. Tanager song.

Wednesday June 24, 2009

Dave Bonta June 24, 2009

Another cloudless, cool morning. Two large craneflies joined back-to-back like Dr. Doolittle’s pushmi-pullyu float sedately past.

September 20, 2017
Crystal-clear sky crossed by flocks of goldfinches. Church bells clang the 8 o'clock hour, a sad exultation that once meant time for school.
September 20, 2016
The sun moves through the foggy woods like a spider at the center of her web. The hollow tocks of chipmunks up and down the hillside.
September 20, 2015
Clear and cold after last night's showers. In the garden, the asters are all pinched shut like collapsed eyes with long, purple lashes.
September 20, 2014
The clack of acorns hitting branches on their way to the ground. I'm beating myself up trying to kill a mosquito reconnoitering my torso.
September 20, 2013
The thin fog turns blue before disappearing. At the woods' edge, ants rise on filmy wings like a curl of smoke.
September 20, 2012
Two flocks of local geese flying in tandem, one following each ridge, skimming the treetops: their raucous cries come from all directions.
September 20, 2011
The walnut trees are already losing their leaves, turning into grotesquely well-hung skeletons a-tremble with squirrels.
September 20, 2010
Sitting in the garden while the porch's new coat of paint dries, I notice the peony leaves too have turned red. A waxwing's glossy calls.
September 20, 2009
The door under the porch is ajar, as if a bear or burglar had been there. Strangled cries from overhead: a crow diving at a slow hawk.
September 20, 2008
A gray, cold morning. The rusty-hinge scolding of a squirrel multiplies and turns into a flock of grackles, pivoting on its thousand wings.