In the dim light, the sound of eight bone knives being whetted against a sapling. The buck straightens up and gives me a baleful look.
October 2013
10/30/2013
Juncos forage in the meadow, softly twittering. The dull booms of distant gunshots like great lead spikes being driven into the earth.
10/29/2013
The tulip poplar’s green and gold leaves look almost as they did at first emergence back in May. But their whispering is so much louder now.
10/28/2013
At the base of the hill, the meadow is white with frost. A small deer carries the white torch of its tail up into the sunlit woods.
10/27/2013
Fourth-quarter moon in the branches of the black walnut, facing back toward the east and the first stain of dawn.
10/26/2013
Cold and clear. Half the trees on the ridge are bare now, leaving narrow, blue windows all along the crest for the sun to pour through.
10/25/2013
Cold, gray, and windy. Old webworm tents freighted with caterpillar corpses flap in the otherwise bare branches of the walnut trees.
10/24/2013
First snow of the year: a squall of small flakes. The flamingo in the garden rapidly acquires a white shawl.
10/23/2013
Cold rain. Three sparrows forage in the weeds next to a barberry bush, its green branches harboring masses of blood-red berries.
10/22/2013
Cloudy and brisk; the woods are full of falling leaves. A sharp-shinned hawk flaps and glides just above the treetops, heading south.
10/21/2013
Patches of frost in the yard. A yellow jacket from the underground nest in the garden lands on the shoulder of my sunlit coat.
10/20/2013
Sunny and cold. The soft whistles of white-throated sparrows are slowly subsumed by the hundred voices of an approaching bulldozer.
10/19/2013
Unlike last night’s full moon, even this dim smudge of a sun is painful to look at. The sound of rodent teeth chiseling a black walnut.
10/18/2013
Windy and cold. A downy woodpecker works over the dead cherry, sounding like a fast hunt-and-peck typist. A towhee calls from the lilac.