White sky, bleary sun. Cold air, hot coffee. That equinoctial balance. Crickets trill, chipmunks tick, aspen leaves flip back and forth.
Year: 2018
Overcast and still, with the smell of rain. A migrant red-breasted nuthatch dives at my head and lands between the spandrels to scold.
The laboring motor in the septic service truck, pumping out our tanks—I try to hear anything else. The Carolina wren. An electric drill.
Like hair on a head the way the stiltgrass falls about in orderly whorls. A raven flies over, hoarse cries out of sync with its wingbeats.
The sun comes out. A green shield bug flies in and lands on a porch column like a freelance leaf. I’m reminded to check when the equinox is.
Rain from a named storm seems special, like strands of hair from someone famous. Two spring peepers are calling, and faintly, the phoebe.
Sun! The meadow glows goldenrod-yellow. Birch leaves at the woods’ edge tremble with warblers. A mosquito sings her thirsty note in my ear.
It’s been 20 years since the butternut tree fell over, but I still miss it: the sky too big, too blank, the nuthatch’s call too far away.
The dampness thickens into drizzle. Its soundtrack: the unending trill of tree crickets. The forest begins to glisten like a salamander.
Foggy at dawn. When I open the door, a Carolina wren zips out of the old hornets’ nest under the porch roof and disappears into the lilac.
Home! A migrant wood thrush softly calls over the roar of the rain-swollen creek. In the big tulip tree, a squirrel is building a drey.
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.