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
10/30/2018
Two tulip poplar leaves vibrate in a private wind: chickadees. The western ridge turns from blood-red to orange to yellow—autumn in reverse.
10/29/2018
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.
10/28/2018
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.
10/27/2018
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.
10/26/2018
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.
10/25/2018
Patches of white in the yard—the first frost. So late! But then the oaks are still green, the sky still constrained by leaves.
10/24/2018
Cold wind. A white-throated sparrow sings its plaintive, quavering song and falls silent. I sit in the reek of dogshit from my boot.
10/23/2018
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.
10/22/2018
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.
10/21/2018
Cold wind salted with the first few snowflakes—that seasonal seasoning. Behind the ridgetop trees, a hint of blue sky.
10/20/2018
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.
10/19/2018
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.
10/18/2018
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.