A light clatter like a touch typist passes under my chair: the resident chipmunk. A green darner zips in, skimming low over the porch floor.
June 2012
6/29/2012
From what nearby October has it come, this already-red red maple leaf plastered face-down on the red porch floor and beaded with rain?
6/28/2012
The plaintive bleat of a left-behind fawn. A pearl crescent butterfly explores my palm with its proboscis, reading between the lines.
6/27/2012
Next to the old dog statue, the sun catches one of the last dame’s-rocket blossoms—a faded purple footnote to a once extensive text.
6/26/2012
Crystal-clear and windy. A turkey vulture skims the treetops, its shadow stretching like a telescope into the light-filled clearings.
6/25/2012
Cool and clearing. Three deer chase through the meadow, coats sleek with dew, bounding high to glimpse each other through the tall weeds.
6/24/2012
A bee-fly’s abdomen pulses, as if it were about to sting. I’m reminded of a black snake rattling its tail aggressively against dry leaves.
6/23/2012
Cool and clear. I keep glancing up from my book—Red Pine’s Taoteching translation—to watch the gnats drifting back and forth on the breeze.
6/22/2012
The penitential sound of a yellow-billed cuckoo. I glimpse a dragonfly out of the corner of an eye—an electric blue needle.
6/21/2012
A red admiral butterfly that keeps changing sizes turns out to be two butterflies, wary of each other, wary about perching on my legs.
6/20/2012
Six cabbage white butterflies dance in the heat. A halictid bee stumbles through the forest of hairs on the back of my arm.
6/19/2012
While a question mark butterfly mines the pores of my index finger for salt, a mosquito lands on my ring finger and sinks her own probe.
6/18/2012
Two chickadees take turns excavating a hole in the last remaining limb of the dead cherry, their small bills tearing at the rotten wood.
6/17/2012
The leaf-footed bug walks slowly and jerkily as a Mars rover on my shoe, antennae shining, then flies straight as a comet across the yard.