Rising late to find the sun already in the trees and the air redolent of autumn. Silhouettes of birds pass as quietly as thoughts through the canopy.
9/27/2021
My first day on earth without a father. It takes me ten minutes to notice the sky—cloudless blue. The laboring engine of a distant plane.
9/27/2020
A walnut falls from a maple tree. Squirrel as surrealist. The mid-morning fog beginning to glow.
9/27/2018
Overcast and cool. Birds only call at intervals now. Crickets’ chirps are as small and repetitive as the blossoms on the white heath aster.
9/27/2017
Cedar waxwings crowd into the tops of the tall locusts, harried by goldfinches. High above, two swifts arc and swoop against the blue.
9/27/2016
Sun shimmers in the treetops while rain still drips from the roof. A squirrel climbs a walnut tree carrying a walnut, as if in some proverb.
9/27/2015
Two crickets are having a singing contest among the stiltgrass, which is now quite red and swept back in one direction as if with a comb.
9/27/2014
A bold squirrel crosses the porch, going right under my chair. Below the top railing, an upside-down fly spins madly in a net of silk.
9/27/2013
Whatever the male wren says, his mate always gives the same reply. He sings into the chimney like a child dropping pennies into a dry well.
9/27/2012
A cranefly drifts through the yard so slowly, I wonder if it’s asleep. A lilac limb wobbles with warblers—don’t ask me what kind.
9/27/2011
Cloud-to-cloud lightning, thunder like a cloth being torn. Downpour. We’ll remember 2011 for years: “That was the autumn of the mosquitoes.”
9/27/2010
The downpour eases, and the cattail leaves stop dancing. A burst of bird calls from within the dogwood thicket: waxwings, towhees.
9/27/2009
Two gray squirrels in their fall colors—snouts and bellies stained brown from walnut hulls—dash past each other on the rain-slick trunk.
9/27/2008
First one, then a second Carolina wren pops out from under the eaves, perches in the fretwork for a second, and flies off into the fog.