Friday February 08, 2019

Dave Bonta February 8, 2019

Last night’s torrential rain has given way to wind, sunlight shimmering on the flooded stream and the waxy leaves of mountain laurel.

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Latticework below the porch has been pushed out, presumably by something that lives under the house. A pileated woodpecker's mad laughter. …

‪A red-tailed hawk flies just inside the woods' edge, past the birches with their catkins and the rambling old lilac just coming into bloom.‬ …

Just-opened leaves on the big tulip poplar, as absurdly small as the unicycles ridden by circus bears. Wind rustles in the dry forest floor. …

A red-tailed hawk struggles to stay aloft against the wind. A spit of rain. Then the clouds disappear as quickly as yesterday's hail stones. …

Sunny and warm. A goldfinch drops down among the black currant bushes with their half-open leaves to dip her bill into the sky-blue stream. …

A towhee sits on a high branch at sunrise, his breast puffed out against the cold. His rufous feathers briefly match the color of the ridge. …

A metallic green jumping spider, moving slowly in the morning cool, climbs from my green shirt sleeve to the green spine of my book. …

Even the invaders' spring is late: barberry, lilac, multiflora rose just now leafing out, the hated myrtle purpling what used to be a lawn. …

A scarlet bough at the woods' edge: I peer through binoculars at the first red maple keys. Deer straggle by in their ragged spring coats. …

Crows mobbing an owl, the sun breaking through clouds, a field sparrow's cup filling to the brim... April is still an unknown country to me. …

Shrill chirps of a truck going in reverse. Under a lowering sky, daylight seeps from the jagged blaze of forsythia at the edge of the woods. …

The Morning Porch/Patio