Saturday June 20, 2009

Dave Bonta June 20, 2009

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.

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Among the faded early daffodils, one white narcissus blooms in the round flower bed with its broken statue of a dog, still holding point. …

In the woods, soft green clouds of newly opened leaves here and there. In the garden, the first bleeding-hearts—hunched, almost apologetic. …

Latticework below the porch has been pushed out, presumably by something that lives under the house. A pileated woodpecker's mad laughter. …

‪A red-tailed hawk flies just inside the woods' edge, past the birches with their catkins and the rambling old lilac just coming into bloom.‬ …

Just-opened leaves on the big tulip poplar, as absurdly small as the unicycles ridden by circus bears. Wind rustles in the dry forest floor. …

A red-tailed hawk struggles to stay aloft against the wind. A spit of rain. Then the clouds disappear as quickly as yesterday's hail stones. …

Sunny and warm. A goldfinch drops down among the black currant bushes with their half-open leaves to dip her bill into the sky-blue stream. …

A towhee sits on a high branch at sunrise, his breast puffed out against the cold. His rufous feathers briefly match the color of the ridge. …

A metallic green jumping spider, moving slowly in the morning cool, climbs from my green shirt sleeve to the green spine of my book. …

Even the invaders' spring is late: barberry, lilac, multiflora rose just now leafing out, the hated myrtle purpling what used to be a lawn. …

A scarlet bough at the woods' edge: I peer through binoculars at the first red maple keys. Deer straggle by in their ragged spring coats. …

Crows mobbing an owl, the sun breaking through clouds, a field sparrow's cup filling to the brim... April is still an unknown country to me. …

Shrill chirps of a truck going in reverse. Under a lowering sky, daylight seeps from the jagged blaze of forsythia at the edge of the woods. …

The Morning Porch