Today instead of the usual quickie here I wrote a proper Morning Porch poem over at the ol’ Via. Bon appetit.
May 2023
5/30/2023
Cloudless and cool. Craneflies drift through shafts of sun like angels with spider legs, as the afterimages from a night of terrifying dreams fade from view.
5/29/2023
Memorial Day. The dame’s-rocket lining the driveway is at its height of purple. A hen turkey at the woods’ edge clucks and calls. Summer’s here.
5/28/2023
Filmy-winged insects drift through rays of sun. A wood thrush comes out into the meadow, hopping like a robin along the edge of the drive.
5/27/2023
Another clear, cold morning with little dew. Goldfinches gad about in the tops of the locusts, seemingly oblivious to other birds’ territorial obsessions.
5/26/2023
Cold and clear 40 minutes before sunrise. A shadow flutters in beside the porch and begins to shriek: whippoorwill. When he finally stops, the meadow is alive with twittering.
5/25/2023
Cold and clear. An Acadian flycatcher gleans breakfast from the undersides of leaves, among the green dreadlocks of a blossoming walnut.
5/24/2023
As early as I get up, I still feel like a late riser: just past six and the birds are already winding down, the sun glimmering though the trees—an eye reddened by smoke from distant forests.
5/23/2023
Humid but blessedly cool; the air’s alive with birdsong and slow-moving insects. Rabbits chase and graze among half-grown bracken.
5/22/2023
A few minutes past sunrise, from the still-deep shadows under the trees, the song of a vagrant Swainson’s thrush, hoarse but ethereal, rising in pitch like a rhetorical question.
5/21/2023
In the half-light of dawn, a Carolina wren burbles aggressively inches away from my ear. Three fledgling wrens blink awake in the porch rafters.
5/20/2023
The snap of a gnatcatcher’s beak behind the lilac, and just beyond, a wood pewee’s melismatic drawl. The sun glimmers briefly through a hole in the clouds.
5/19/2023
An American redstart calling from the top of the nearest walnut sounds so insistent, but about what? I’m here! This is my tree! Or maybe just: Good morning!
5/18/2023
High-altitude murk gives the low-angled light a timeless feel. It’s barely above freezing, but the birds still sound ecstatic. Tennessee or Blackburnian warbler? That accelerating buzz…