Two days before my friend from England arrives, my inner voice sounds like a tour guide: Those are flickers. Hear how they croon their name?
April 2012
4/29/2012
Fragments of sky are still visible behind the haze of new leaves. The cattails are shedding; tufts of down drift by. That Sunday silence.
4/28/2012
Cold and overcast. Up above the blossoming hawthorn, three crows walk back and forth on the forest floor as if searching for a lost trinket.
4/27/2012
The sun clears the ridge and disappears behind a dark lid of clouds. The wind which a moment before felt envigorating is now simply cold.
4/26/2012
Watched by a chipmunk at the end of the stone wall, I hold a mouthful of coffee in my cheeks, do my best to look as if I know how to live.
4/25/2012
Sun strikes the top of the tulip tree—half-grown leaves vibrating in the wind. In the road, the severed hindquarters of a rabbit.
4/24/2012
Bright and windy. A towhee flies in and out of a multiflora rose bush seemingly without a care, as if it weren’t studded with sharp hooks.
4/23/2012
Snow falling faster than it can melt. Unto every one that hath shall be given, says the sky: hawthorn and bridal wreath now twice as white.
4/22/2012
Church bells from town swell and fade as the wind eddies—some old hymn on the carillon. A black-and-white warbler’s breathy two-note call.
4/21/2012
A metallic green jumping spider, moving slowly in the morning cool, climbs from my green shirt sleeve to the green spine of my book.
4/20/2012
A half-grown rabbit emerges from the rosebush and pauses in the middle of the blue driveway to shake its head and scratch behind its ears.
4/19/2012
The green blush deepens on the hillside; shining motes of pollen speckle my laptop screen. A crow flaps up from the black currant bushes.
4/18/2012
The white sky’s bright wound slowly scabs over. A groundhog’s head emerges from the hole under the bedroom, its eyes as bottomless as wells.
4/17/2012
Cool and overcast. The soft thump of a bird side-swiping a window. An ant walks with exquisite slowness up the side of the house.