The big windthrown locust tree is nearly invisible in the high weeds. Out back, an old snake skin flutters from the branches of a spicebush.
October 2017
October 30, 2017
High winds after a soaking rain. The fallen walnuts in the driveway have all turned black, soggy hulls sagging like bodies in a bog.
October 29, 2017
Steady rain. A sharp-shinned hawk lands on a gray limb with his gray back to me, then darts down into the weeds, flashing October orange.
October 28, 2017
Among the died-back stiltgrass below the porch, a cluster of native deer-tongue grass has emerged, pointed “tongues” just beginning to curl.
October 27, 2017
From under a hat brim ablaze with sun, I gaze out at the stiltgrass glazed with frost. Jays in the treetops. Falling acorns tick and tock.
October 26, 2017
A hint of winter in the way the dead cattail leaves hiss and rattle. But in the garden, a few coneflowers still brandish tattered suns.
October 25, 2017
White sky, bright leaves, shivering on the branch as if in ecstasy. The sine wave of a gray squirrel’s tail and body bounding up the road.
October 24, 2017
Red: berries on a leafless spicebush, gaps between segments of a curled-up black caterpillar, paint on the porch floor lifting like leaves.
October 23, 2017
Brighter color between the trees: sunrise. Gray as their trunks: a doe and her grown fawns. From down hollow, a screech owl’s trill.
October 22, 2017
There’s a new hole in the hornets’ nest—flying squirrel? The scarlet oak we transplanted from the woods years ago is starting to color up.
October 21, 2017
Three propeller planes in half an hour, noisy as airborne lawnmowers. It’s peak haiku time, but I could disappear into a novel.
October 20, 2017
Now that the walnut trees are bare I can see the aspens down along the boggy end of the meadow—leaves so quick to quake, so slow to let go.
October 19, 2017
Two patches of sunlight side-by-side on the myrtle: one direct from the sun that glistens, one reflected from a window that merely glows.
October 18, 2017
The builder leaves but hammering continues—a pileated woodpecker. Two chipmunks poke their heads out on either side of a rock in the wall.