April 2012

Monday April 30, 2012

Dave Bonta April 30, 2012 4

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?

Sunday April 29, 2012

Dave Bonta April 29, 2012 2

Fragments of sky are still visible behind the haze of new leaves. The cattails are shedding; tufts of down drift by. That Sunday silence.

Saturday April 28, 2012

Dave Bonta April 28, 2012 1

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.

Friday April 27, 2012

Dave Bonta April 27, 2012 2

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.

Thursday April 26, 2012

Dave Bonta April 26, 2012 5

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.

Wednesday April 25, 2012

Dave Bonta April 25, 2012 6

Sun strikes the top of the tulip tree—half-grown leaves vibrating in the wind. In the road, the severed hindquarters of a rabbit.

Tuesday April 24, 2012

Dave Bonta April 24, 2012 1

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.

September 19, 2017
A monarch butterfly en route to Mexico glides over the house, past the orange leaves on the last living branch of a hollow maple.
September 19, 2016
A new bloom of gnats—I saw them swarming by the back door—and the yard is full of fall warblers, foraging with the chickadees and titmice.
September 19, 2015
Even unseen, the raven crying rawk rawk from high overhead makes the flat white sky more interesting. In the yard, a monarch's regal orange.
September 19, 2014
A faint smell of sewage on the wind. A wren singing from atop the springhouse in the absence of a female supplies his own call-and-response.
September 19, 2013
Goldfinch, nuthatch, catbird, wren. The herb-garden chipmunk, cheeks bulging, pauses on top of the wall to groom its paws.
September 19, 2012
A dozen vultures fresh from their communal roost circle low overhead, wings shining white whenever they tilt toward the sun—angels of death.
September 19, 2011
A meadow vole takes an after-death journey into the forest in the jaws of a cat, who holds her head high for once and does not slink.
September 19, 2010
A succession of anxious or querulous calls—nuthatch, crow, Cooper's hawk, pileated woodpecker—until sunrise reddens the western ridge.
September 19, 2009
Clear and cold. I follow my breath as it drifts over the ridges and valleys of the tin roof sheltering the oil tanks. A patter of acorns.
September 19, 2008
Gold is spreading from the goldenrod up into the trees, here and there: walnut, elm, birch. A jay dives into the lilac: blue from the sky.