Overcast and humid. A brown leafhopper appears on my arm, and I nudge it with my finger to watch its improbable rocket-launch of a leap.
Month: June 2016
Noise from the quarry—a grinding drone that runs under everything: oriole song, woodpecker drumming, a hummingbird’s Geiger-counter clicks.
A cricket in the wall chirps more quickly now that the sun is on it. I sneeze and he falls silent. A great spangled fritillary careens past.
Gray things: a squirrel and a titmouse sharing a gray limb. A catbird in the road swallowing gray stones. Large parts of the sky.
A filmy-winged fly back-lit by the sun yo-yos up and down in the middle of the yard, despite the stiff breeze. Overhead, a vulture circling.
Everything moves in the wind but the broken dog statue, the dead rosebush, and the five-fingered cherry stump raised as if in surrender.
Batting away a hornet hovering next to my legs—the softness of its wings. A chipmunk adds its metronome to the chorus of bird calls.
A weird cry, like an alarm clock keening for consummation: a lone 17-year cicada, far from the main body of its brood. It stops. It resumes.
Wind salted with rain. A male indigo bunting clings to a black cherry branch like the one blue leaf, fluttering with the rest.
Heard but not seen: two blue jays commenting on the woods below. Seen but not heard: two gray squirrels sneaking under the house.
The air is so clear, I can make out grains of pollen drifting back and forth against the dark woods. The shrill alarm-calls of a raven.
Phoebes mate in the rain, their thin branch bobbing as they touch tails. I crush a slow flood-water mosquito with a clap of my hands.
The walnut tree beside the road is in bloom—long green catkins like fringes on antique lampshades. A least skipper flits through the meadow.
Rain. A red-spotted purple lands on the top rail and spreads its dark wings like a damp umbrella. A jumping spider shelters under my foot.