Thursday May 02, 2019

Under heavy clouds, the big crabapple tree’s first blossoms are beginning to open. A honeybee makes a close inspection of my shirt.

On this date

Cold and clear. Stars fade as the ground fog grows, partly lit by the crescent moon, partly by the dawn. …

In the lily-of-the-valley bed decimated by drought, five blood-colored beads. The wind shuffles the leaves on the porch like playing cards. …

A half moon high overhead, fading as the fog rises off the meadow. A nuthatch lands on the dead elm's smooth trunk and turns all about. …

‪A phoebe perches on the edge of the porch, only to get dive-bombed by a gnatcatcher. Relax, my friends! There are enough flies for everyone.‬ …

Mist turns into drizzle. A small, filmy-winged fly drifts back and forth across the yard, heedless as a texting teen. A goldfinch monologue. …

In the green and yellow woods, here and there a red branch. But the kinglets in the birches hide their ruby crowns under olive-green shocks. …

Up before dawn. A few stars glimmer through the fog. Deep in the grass, the pale lights of glowworms brightening and dimming. …

With every gust of wind, a mob of yellow leaves comes swirling out over the meadow. From just inside the woods' edge, the crash of a limb. …

Something glitters on a tansy stalk next to the porch: the hard foam surface of a praying mantis egg case. A tiny spider dangles alongside. …

The dead cherry has shed two more limbs, yellow stubs shining dully like the eyes of a corpse. I find a conjoined apple in the fridge. …

Clear and windy. Twelve crows fly sideways in tight formation over the treetops, the still-green oak leaves gilded by the sun. …

A sudden commotion of geese. I run to scan the sky out of habit, as if they were migratory, and their "V" still a horn open to the north. …

A pileated woodpecker hammers on a dead tree, resonant as it never was in life. I watch ground fog form and dissipate into a clear dawn sky. …

The Morning Porch