Overcast, cool and quiet. The muffled crows of the neighbor’s rooster, still inside the coop. A small, brown moth lands on my shoulder.
Year: 2015
Workmen up at the other house: the whine of an annual cicada in the trees alternates with an actual electric saw.
A dragonfly with shimmering, banded wings and an electric blue abdomen lands on a garlic seed-head, falls still and nearly disappears.
Seeing the big maple silhouetted against the dawn sky, I notice for the first time it’s half dead. A clanking as the quarry comes to life.
Too warm for a coat, too cool for a t-shirt. And in the grass weighted down with dew, the murmur of crickets. It feels like autumn.
A red-spotted purple butterfly emerges into the glare like an emissary from the shadows. In the front garden, a burst of wren chatter.
Clear and cool, but in the woods, last night’s rain is still reaching the ground, drop by shining drop. A wood pewee’s eponymous drawl.
A cicada lies on its back on the porch, legs churning the air. I turn it over and the dog gives it a good, close reading with her nose.
The porch floor shining in the sun, a dragonfly comes in to inspect it, flying right under my propped-up legs. The dry whisper of its wings.
Below the porch, I notice a single orange jewelweed overlooked by the deer. The hummingbird zips right past it on her way to the garden.
Cloudless and cool. A red-spotted purple and a silver-spotted skipper work adjacent bergamot heads, whose tubes are beginning to dry up.
The rain eases off at mid-morning, and once again a box turtle comes out of the woods and marches up the driveway with surprising haste.
The feral garlic top-heads have split their skins, unveiling clusters of beady eyes. The sun’s a glowing smudge. It’s going to be hot.
A bindweed flower is open in the garden—a white blunderbuss pointed, like the dog’s inquisitive snout, at the foggy woods.