June 2009

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

A hummingbird grooms itself in the middle of a downpour while a phoebe plucks insects from the side of the dead elm, hovering in place.

Another dark morning. The wood pewee makes a rare visit to the edge of the yard, sings one, sad note, and snaps a brown moth out of the air.

The black-robed cowbird at the top of the dead elm burbles authoritatively, like the Grand Ayatollah of the yard taking credit for the rain.

Breezy, overcast, a spit of rain—these reports never seem complete without the weather. The buzz of a hummingbird. A common yellowthroat.