Friday August 02, 2019

Dave Bonta August 2, 2019 0

The neighbor’s push mower purrs and wheezes like some asthmatic, prehistoric beast. A moth flees into our garden, careening back and forth.

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Cloudy and cool. The garden is full of the silence of a cat stealing across the shed's corrugated roof. At last, a blue tit chatters alarm. …

A wren calls from the cattails like a deranged cheerleader, while in the woods, a vireo sounds as if it's barely able to give a damn. …

Even at late morning, it's chilly when the sun goes in. The yard is now white with snakeroot flowers. The distant sound of a power saw. …

A trembling in the cattails: female yellowthroat. Birds flit through the treetops, smaller than the motes of grit in my ancient binoculars. …

Weeding the garden is never dull. Yesterday morning a milk snake writhed around my wrist; today, hornets boil up and sting my hand. …

Sunbeams through the fog. The thin bull thistle beside the road with its one purple head sways ever so slightly into and out of the light. …

A plane drags its cross-shaped shadow over the ridge, loud as an evangelist. A few clouds. Half a moon abandoned in the center of the sky. …

A blue-gray gnatcatcher drops into the dead cherry and begins to forage, singing its small hoarse note. Beads of rain wobble but don't fall. …

Below the porch, a generic chirp from a warbler of indeterminate species. I remember the Central American term for such skulkers: chipes. …

The air is still and quiet. In the springhouse meadow, the ears of a doe appear above the goldenrod, pivoting like leaves in a private wind. …

The Morning Porch/Patio