Humid, overcast and cool. I study the flamboyant gestures of certain meadow plants already more than half-way dead. A fat beetle flies past.
Month: August 2021
Almost fall. The motherless fawn running out of the woods has lost its spots but not its cloud of flies.
The fog slowly lifts, except where it’s been trapped by funnel spider webs. The cardinal’s cheer seems a bit misplaced.
Fog. A quiet gurgle from the stream, still digesting last night’s downpour. The only other song belongs to a vireo.
Ten minutes till sunrise. The gibbous moon is losing its glow like a guitar pick thrown from a stage.
In the dawn light, a hummingbird double-checks that I’m not a flower, hovering over my head like a wild thought.
A stratum of sunlit leaves forming in the forest understory. A cicada wakes up. Under the house, something coughs.
The meadow and its crickets. The full moon emerges from the clouds upside-down in every drop of dew.
A few minutes after moonset, and the ground fog is still aglow. A screech owl’s monotone trill.
Sun in the trees and a small spot of orange beside the porch: a Mexican sunflower blooming despite having twice been dinner for a groundhog.
Cardinal joined by a whippoorwill. The white shapes in the yard turn out to be snakeroot.
Breezy with sometime sunshine. A hummingbird’s buzz grows louder as she hovers in front of a window, bill to bill with an unexpected rival.
Rain and warblers. An earth-shaking blast from the quarry two miles away. The soft susurrus of tree crickets.
Sunrise hidden by clouds. Towhee and cardinal’s usual soliloquies. A mosquito sings her need into my ear.