Friday October 01, 2010

Dave Bonta October 1, 2010

Clear and windy. Twelve crows fly sideways in tight formation over the treetops, the still-green oak leaves gilded by the sun.

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Looking out at the pouring rain and a few sodden birds hunched at the feeders, I catch a whiff of pancakes through the walls. …

Cold wind. A white-throated sparrow sings its plaintive, quavering song and falls silent. I sit in the reek of dogshit from my boot. …

Red: berries on a leafless spicebush, gaps between segments of a curled-up black caterpillar, paint on the porch floor lifting like leaves. …

Over the wind, the twittering of chickadees trailing a flock of kinglets into the birches. Two brown creepers appear on adjacent trunks. …

With the walnuts bare, I can see the aspens again—now a flickering orange, like that tree in the Mabinogion burning without being consumed. …

Clear and bright, but the wind still blows. The long leaves of the cattails have started to brown, their curled ends bowing toward the west. …

First snow of the year: a squall of small flakes. The flamingo in the garden rapidly acquires a white shawl. …

Too hot for late October. A yellowjacket circles my pale face as if looking for a paper nest. A mantis lands upside-down beside the door. …

The woods are more open by the day. Three croaks from overhead: raven. The electric company's line crew arrives, red flags on their truck. …

All along the ridgetop now the sky is visible, cathedral-sized windows between the trees. The throaty roar of the neighbor's pickup truck. …

The low clouds are a patchwork of light and dark; the oaks change from brown to burgundy in the space of a minute. A bright curtain of rain. …

A small buck wanders past, the gray-brown gleam of a November woods already in his antlers. Snowbirds in the cherry tree, their soft calls. …

The Morning Porch/Patio