Tuesday May 11, 2010

Dave Bonta May 11, 2010

Gray squirrel in a walnut tree gnawing on a walnut, fox squirrel in a maple feasting on maple keys: one spits out shells, the other, wings.

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Equinox. I spot some goldenrod, done flowering, turning yellow a second time. My mother stops by to tell me about a singing porcupine. …

White sky, bleary sun. Cold air, hot coffee. That equinoctial balance. Crickets trill, chipmunks tick, aspen leaves flip back and forth. …

Under dark clouds, the field full of goldenrod glows in the rising sun's light like some Viking hoard in an archaeologist's trench. …

Clear and cold at sunrise. A migrant thrush calls from the not-yet-ruined temple of the trees. Overhead, the archaic smile of the moon. …

Overcast and cool. Tiny, pale-winged insects drift back and forth, and—perhaps not coincidentally—the yard trees seethe with small birds. …

Wind shuffles the suddenly yellow leaves of elm and birch—their marked decks. A fly wanders the inside of a window pane on sticky feet. …

The hornets stream in and out of their hole in the garden, departing to the south, returning from the east. A towhee calling in the dogwood. …

My mother emerges from the weeds beside the springhouse with a handful of mint. Behind her at the woods' edge, a red-tailed hawk takes wing. …

A series of high-pitched snorts from a deer up on the ridge. Coyote? Bear? Or—imagine the horror for an herbivore—an attack of hay fever? …

Dawn breeze. The whine of tires from the highway over the ridge is punctuated by the heavy thwacks of falling walnuts. …

Blue jays in the rain, less blue than gray, converge on an oak one tree in from the edge, tails like hands spread for a throw of dice. …

Equinox. A flat-white sky, and for the first time I notice two maple trees at the woods' edge already half infiltrated by orange, by red. …

The Morning Porch