Saturday August 16, 2014

Dave Bonta August 16, 2014

A scattering of white in my overgrown garden: soapwort, bindweed, fleabane, snakeroot. The sky brightens. A towhee calls from the lilac.

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Two oak leaves are caught by a birch, one after the other. From somewhere in the clouds, the buzzing rattle of a plane with a loose part. …

Raindrops grow farther and farther apart until there are none. Three squirrels screech in counterpoint, a preaching choir of fear. …

The only cloud is an unmoving section of contrail that barely melts in the course of an hour, stubborn as a block of ice in all that blue. …

After a night of high winds, the lilac is more threadbare than ever, and in the crowns of the oaks, only the odd clot of a drey remains. …

Cold, overcast and still. Two song sparrows with markedly different regional accents sing back and forth across the road. …

Cold, with a bitter wind. The juncos sound twice as cheerful as they did before the snow, twittering as they chase through the lilac. …

The big tulip tree at the woods' edge is releasing its seeds, spinning blades backlit by the sun. The cedar by the door trembles with birds. …

Mid-morning, and my feet are propped on the rail as usual. A female downy woodpecker lands on my right boot and taps at the worn-down sole. …

By midmorning, all the white crosses left by jets have disappeared into another cloudless sky. A soft bang as a junco side-swipes a window. …

The bubbling song of a wren in the half-dark makes it suddenly half-light. From now till blue noon, everything else is a footnote. …

Through a curtain of cold rain, the lilac's thinning collection of stamps from the countries of summer, green-gold against the gray woods. …

Rain drumming on the roof. A single bar of white-throated sparrow song, and then the factory whistle dividing the dawn from the day. …

The Morning Porch/Patio