The rain stops but the trees go on dripping. The sky brightens. Through newly bare spicebush branches, I can see the springhouse once again.
October 2021
10/30/2021
Fog. A squirrel is peeling ribbons of bark from the branches of the big tulip tree. And all these years I’ve been blaming porcupines!
10/29/2021
On a dark morning, fall colors that seemed bland yesterday are bright embers. Behind the still-green lilac, a deer’s pale legs.
10/28/2021
Mercury rises just as the stars begin to fade. A jet flies under it. A lone goose flies over it. I look away and lose it in the dawn sky.
10/27/2021
The slender reed of a white-throated sparrow’s voice trembles in the wind. A hole opens in the clouds, blue and sunrise pink.
10/26/2021
Breezy drizzle mixing in with falling leaves—those that twirl, those that spiral, those that somersault, those that glide.
10/25/2021
Gibbous moon overhead through a thin veil of fog. A breeze moves through the forest, liberating the night’s rain.
10/24/2021
Four small patches of blue sky huddle together like blue sheep in a white woolen sky. The wingbeats of crows.
10/23/2021
A dark and rainy dawn. One especially well-harmonized train horn and the sparrows and wrens wake up.
10/22/2021
Gloomy with a few drops of rain. I spot a new-to-me Virginia creeper six feet from the porch: that crimson.
10/21/2021
The last clear morning for a while. A red-tailed hawk flies through the bare birches, trailed by two outraged crows.
10/20/2021
Sunrise inches forward, chirp by chirp: towhee, white-throated sparrow. A rabbit gazes at me from the end of the porch with eyes dark as cisterns.
10/19/2021
With the understory losing its leaves, the forest is threadbare, shot through with light. In the herb bed, a volunteer tomato is in bloom.
10/18/2021
Sunrise. Fingers of orange light through orange leaves. After the furnace cycles off, the silence seems enormous.