Monday October 29, 2018

Dave Bonta 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.

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Did it really rain hard last night, or did I dream that? The creek seems no louder. High against the clouds, a small hawk flaps and circles. …

The croak of a raven skimming the treetops. A white-throated sparrow fresh from bathing in the stream grooms itself in the weak sunshine. …

Egg-white sky with one sun over medium. It's cold. I'm reading a line about roosters crowing just as the neighbor's rooster begins to crow. …

‪The tulip tree's leaves have burst their buds—a pale green cloud. A gnatcatcher in the shadbush darts and hovers like a slow hummingbird.‬ …

White clouds of shadbush blossoms off in the woods. A tiger swallowtail circles the yard—the silent applause of its great yellow wings. …

Flies and butterflies, gnats and gnatcatchers, blue-headed vireo, paper wasp. The towhee in the lilac bush starts his song with a stutter. …

The flickers that have been hanging around the yard copulate next to the old den hole in the elm snag—the one a black snake raided in 2012. …

The brown thrasher who's been improvising steadily for half an hour falls silent. A moment later I hear the cak-cak-cak of a Cooper's hawk. …

The white sky's bright wound slowly scabs over. A groundhog's head emerges from the hole under the bedroom, its eyes as bottomless as wells. …

The thin forsythia at the woods' edge is in bloom at last. Two towhees battle over territory: rival renditions of the same six-note trill. …

The French lilac whitening into blossom, its once-smooth profile smashed by last October's snowstorm, finally looks wild against the woods. …

First morning without long johns: my legs feel like orphans in their tunnels of denim. The air is full of gnats and the gobbling of turkeys. …

Still cloudless, but the light lacks the crystal-clarity of previous mornings. Juncos all a-twitter, perhaps feeling the pull of the north. …

The Morning Porch