May 2018

The yellowthroat’s song is half submerged in noise from the quarry. A heron flies over. I watch my breath drift away toward the east.

Dawn. Thin fog infiltrates the trees’ pointillist green. A whip-poor-will calls at the woods’ edge with the absolute conviction of the mad.

The all-night rain has eased into drizzle. A drenched squirrel plods through the yard. A catbird appears on a branch and sings half a note.

Black-throated green warbler. I fetch my chair from the creek where the storm blew it. High over the neighboring valley, a killdeer’s cry.

Cloudy and cool. The great-crested flycatchers are back with their dinosaur calls. From down-hollow, the faint carillon of a wood thrush.

Three days of heat have fuzzed the treetops in gray-green gauze. A warbler wheezes. The breeze makes an empty beer bottle moan.

A squirrel emerges beside the one white miniature daffodil, just coming into bloom as the others shrivel. A Baltimore oriole’s glossy song.

It’s hot. Everything with a stinger is out and about. Two carpenter bees body-slam like professional wrestlers and fall down to the floor.