Sunrise. A deer grazes at the woods’ edge. A phoebe perches beside her and makes repeated sorties over her back, snapping up the deerflies.
Year: 2016
The wild garlic has all gone to seed, heads bowed with the weight of their descendants. A tiny ichneumon patrols the porch, wings a-quiver.
Overcast and cool. The irregular chirps of a cricket in the tall grass. A Canada goose flying over the ridge all alone honks twice.
Fog glowing sunrise-orange. Sound is out of the east: traffic, freight trains, the crusher at the quarry. A chickadee sings both his songs.
Sun in the treetops and a raven’s hollow, metallic croak. A fly buzzes through the porch without slowing down.
Yellow walnut leaflets come loose and flutter down in the slightest breeze, infiltrating for a few moments the confederacy of butterflies.
The rain begins just after mid-morning, slowly building in intensity. I watch as the dull green pelage of the world turns glossy again.
Bright sun after last night’s long-awaited rain. A chipmunk races down the road with cheek pouches bulging. A wood pewee’s melancholy call.
The drought forces plants into triage: the big tulip tree is turning yellow from the inside out; perennials are dying from the bottom up.
Two chipmunks in the woods locked in a rap battle fall in and out of sync. The chipmunk in the garden listens from atop the wall.
A hummingbird buzzes below the porch, looking for the touch-me-nots that the deer have eaten. Fly on my shoe, is it everything you’d hoped?
Through thinning clouds, the mid-morning sun’s dull glow. Below in the woods, leaves and branches beaded with moisture begin to glisten.
Cool and clear. A so-called white admiral butterfly lands on the other chair, with all the black and electric blue allure of a velvet Elvis.
As the heat builds, the cicadas’ electric drills fall silent one by one. Coneflowers wilt until they look like yellow jellyfish.