Saturday November 16, 2013

Dave Bonta November 16, 2013

Two squirrels circle warily beside the road. A third crosses the stream with a walnut between its teeth and seeing them, takes to the trees.

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Shirt-sleeve weather. A squirrel unearths a walnut from the yard in that casual way squirrels have of pretending it's doing something else. …

‪Weak sunlight. Dead leaves are all a-rustle, rummaged through by squirrels, voles, chipmunks, juncos. The distant cry of a maybe killdeer.‬ …

Something has left a line of black droppings on the porch beneath the railing. I watch them slowly disappear under a new blanket of snow. …

Branches skinned by rabbits, yellow as fresh bones, are starting to emerge from the snowpack. Light rain on my glasses turns my view to blear. …

Three thin continents of drifted snow on the porch floor shape-shift every time the wind picks up, losing a headland, gaining a peninsula. …

Sunrise. The bluebird warbles once, as if unsure whether it really will be that kind of day. The cardinal keeps singing his one good note. …

A fresh cement of wintry mix traversed by chipmunks, tails italic with urgency. Ice-coated branches rock in the wind—a cellophane sound. …

The nasal call of a jay became the soundtrack of happiness one sun-drenched afternoon of my childhood. The place is gone now—a subdivision. …

A section of latticework below the porch floor has fallen off, and though it kept nothing out, I feel strangely vulnerable. A red sunrise. …

Late to rise, I get a faceful of sun. Sparkles on the frosted snowpack only inhabit the glare between the shadows, like stars on strike. …

The Morning Porch/Patio