Sun in the thinning treetops—a nest of needles. From the other house, the muffled sound of a drill teaching the wall to sing.
October 2017
October 16, 2017
The train’s horn is full of Monday. Migrating towhees compare notes at the edge of the woods. A blue wound closing in the clouds.
October 15, 2017
Sunlight for the first time in days, flooding through new holes in the forest canopy. The wistful theme song of a white-throated sparrow.
October 14, 2017
The smell of wood smoke; I think of the fires in California. A dead limb at the woods’ edge crashes to the ground. A monarch’s small flame.
October 13, 2017
Cold and gloomy despite the bright leaves; even the wren sounds querulous. When I look again, the unmoving fly is gone from the wall.
October 12, 2017
Gold on gold: a kinglet’s crest among the birch leaves. Rust on rust: a chipmunk’s fur among rain-flattened tangles of stiltgrass.
October 11, 2017
Just past daybreak it begins to rain and the forest is full of falling leaves—a slow, steady flutter of summer yellow into the drab shadows.
October 10, 2017
Before dawn, the half moon’s flat edge passing through different types of clouds like a cheese knife. The neighbor’s rooster starts to crow.
October 9, 2017
In a lull between showers, a squirrel inches out along a slick black walnut twig. I decide the sound a falling walnut makes is SPLUD.
October 8, 2017
The goldenrod is all brown, but each breeze sprinkles it with yellow from the woods. The last hornet returns to her ghost town of a nest.
October 7, 2017
Sun a diffuse blob like a culture in a petri dish. Hoarse cries of a raven. Black walnuts are falling in groups now: a thunder of punches.
October 6, 2017
Down-hollow, the nocturnal katydids are already getting started: time is short. A fly on its back treads the air, trying to right itself.
October 5, 2017
A squadron of tulip poplar keys spinning down into the stiltgrass. From over the ridge, a locomotive’s hoarse chord.
October 4, 2017
A squirrel on a walnut limb examines each nut but leaves without picking any. In the strong sunlight, the meteor streak of a wasp’s excreta.