Dark clouds moving in from the west; this sun won’t last long. A breeze carries the sweet, pungent smell of ozone mingled with decay.
October 2018
October 30, 2018
Two tulip poplar leaves vibrate in a private wind: chickadees. The western ridge turns from blood-red to orange to yellow—autumn in reverse.
October 29, 2018
A few oaks are turning brown behind the birches’ washed-out yellow. High on a bare limb, a squirrel nest the exact shape of a porcupine.
October 28, 2018
A raven flies over the house, croaking. I keep wiping droplets of mist off the glossy pages of the book I’m reading about the holocaust.
October 27, 2018
Rain again. This is the dreariest, drabbest autumn I’ve ever seen—except for the moss and tree-bark lichens, which have never been brighter.
October 26, 2018
Cold and gray. A deer snorts again and again over at the neighbors’—bear? Bobcat? Coyote? In the other direction, a sparrow hawk zips past.
October 25, 2018
Patches of white in the yard—the first frost. So late! But then the oaks are still green, the sky still constrained by leaves.
October 24, 2018
Cold wind. A white-throated sparrow sings its plaintive, quavering song and falls silent. I sit in the reek of dogshit from my boot.
October 23, 2018
A swarm of maple helicopters. I sneeze and a wren begins to sing. A kinglet rotates in time to the music. We’re in this dance together.
October 22, 2018
Since 10:00 o’clock, the clouds that left have not been replaced. I find myself paying close attention to the nasal calls of chickadees.
October 21, 2018
Cold wind salted with the first few snowflakes—that seasonal seasoning. Behind the ridgetop trees, a hint of blue sky.
October 20, 2018
Now that I can see the quaking aspens, through bare walnut branches, I can hear them too: their constant whisper. Gauzy rain. A train horn.
October 19, 2018
The silence of a power outage gives way to the rumble of a generator. High overhead, the resident pair of ravens croak back and forth.
October 18, 2018
Clear and cold. Over the wind, the rustle of a squirrel bounding through waves of dead grass, and the high, thin calls of a lone waxwing.