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.

Tuesday June 23, 2009

Dave Bonta June 23, 2009

The catbird sails in and out of the lilac without interrupting his stream of song. Oak leaves glossy as mirrors; the sky so blue it hurts.

Monday June 22, 2009

Dave Bonta June 22, 2009

Soft applause from the road bank: a doe’s ears flapping as she shakes her head to chase away the flies.

Sunday June 21, 2009

Dave Bonta June 21, 2009

Up early enough to catch the end of the shortest night of the year, alive with wind and gurgling water, fireflies, a lone spring peeper.

January 20, 2020

Clear and bitter cold (-11°C) but also fabulous—the icy snow covered with glitter where the sun stripes it, blazing through the trees. …

January 20, 2019

Storm past, the temperature is plunging, just as they predicted. The new icicles aren't even done dripping. They sway in the bitter wind. …

January 20, 2018

Just above freezing but it feels like a day at the beach—sun on white sand, a steady breeze, the surf-like hiss of pines, a jay for a gull. …

January 20, 2017

Blue jays jeering in the steady rain. In January. One more thing that doesn't feel right on a day when the world is out of joint. …

January 20, 2015

Two degrees below freezing, and the sky an almost uniform white except for a wrinkling in the east, like the brow of a corpse. Two crows. …

January 20, 2014

Brown patches in the yard where deer have pawed the snow aside to eat myrtle. An oak leaf curled like a stillborn spirals down from the sky. …

January 20, 2013

The sound of the wind up on the ridge mingles with the sound of trains in the valley until it's almost impossible to tell them apart. …

January 20, 2012

Cold—the porch floorboards pop under my feet. Real snow at last! The rising sun stretches two faint fingers across the driveway. …

January 20, 2011

Juncos hop on the icy snow between the cattails where a rabbit disappeared fifteen minutes earlier, taking the darkness with it. …

January 20, 2010

Cold and clear at sunrise. Two ravens following the ridge croak in unison, their wings almost touching. A squirrel descends the springhouse. …

January 20, 2009

Clear and cold at dawn, with a crescent moon tangled in the treetops. A tiny white prayer flag flutters from a branch: some vacant cocoon. …

January 20, 2008

Very cold. The woods seem unusually lifeless, and there's a new creaking sound with every breeze. After a while, I realize: no squirrels. …