Tuesday January 14, 2014

Dave Bonta January 14, 2014

At the woods’ edge, a jumble of bone-white sticks: spicebush branches debarked by rabbits. A gray blur where a titmouse grooms in the lilac.

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A coal tit lands at the feeder and I do a double-take—so much like a chickadee! Then in the next garden, a gray squirrel's querulous alarm. …

A yellow tulip tree leaf lies face-down on the porch floor. Nearby, an assassin bug crouches like a martial artist when I move my foot. …

Still cool at sunrise. A large beetle zooms past. Faint noise from the highway. The desultory calls of a red-eyed vireo. …

Five nuthatches land in the walnut tree and begin scuttling up and down its trunk in the pouring rain, poking and probing the furrowed bark. …

A hummingbird sits on the tip of one of the dead cherry's few remaining twigs, like a fat green leaf with the stem pointing the wrong way. …

A male and female goldfinch glean seeds from a tall bull thistle. She eats in silence while he in his loud yellow suit chatters on and on. …

When I move my head, the hummingbird darts in for a closer look, leveling her long samurai bill at my neck, my ear, my glasses. …

Dawn fog lifts and pauses, so it's clear to a height of ten feet, then white, then the crescent moon. A red-bellied woodpecker's slow chant. …

Sun in the treetops. A doe and her fawn are consuming the future of the forest, one oak or tulip poplar seedling at a time. The doe burps. …

The Morning Porch/Patio