Sunday September 15, 2013

Dave Bonta September 15, 2013

Cold at sunrise. A pileated woodpecker hitches up the trunk of tall locust, pausing to yell when he reaches the sunlit crown.

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Over the rumble of my furnace, the cries of tundra swans: a long, trembling thread of them high in the blue, wings sparkling like snow. …

Bright sun, heavy frost. Down in the hollow, a screech owl calls as persistently as if it were midnight. I take deep breaths of the icy air. …

A honeybee investigates my thermos mug, brushing my finger with her wings. The barberry bush trembles from all the sparrows in it. …

A squirrel enters the cavity in the dead elm and rests its chin on the lip of the hole, watching silently as juncos swirl through the yard. …

Sunlight glistens on the ground where pockets of frost have melted and slides across a length of spider silk drifting through the yard. …

Sunrise. I watch the slow drift of contrail graffiti: I, I, I at cross angles, until they merge and disappear into spreading clouds. …

The fourth-quarter moon is the thinnest of Cheshire-Cat grins among the treetops. Sunrise reddens the western ridge. A nuthatch calls. …

Cold and gray—November weather at last. Oak leaves twirl and somersault past the porch, accompanied by a few motes of snow. …

One grown fawn attempts to nurse; the other runs into the woods, ducking its head as if pursued by some horsefly impervious to the cold. …

An eight-point buck struts through the neck-high meadow, stirring up sparrows and goldenrod fluff, lifting his tail to shit while he walks. …

At first light, a siren goes off and doesn't stop, a high steady note as if from a Tibetan prayer bowl. Please God, I mutter, make it stop. …

My left thumb itches, but nothing wickeder than a nuthatch materializes. The sun comes up. …

The Morning Porch/Patio