Somewhere above the clouds, a military jet heads north: a gray sound on a gray day. In the newly bare lilac, yellow wires of bindweed.
Dave Bonta
High winds stir the trees like surf, a dead branch crashes every few minutes, but the small birds still forage, twittering in the birches.
A true November day, cold and gray and wet. Patches of pale lichen on tree trunks glow like dim headlights in the fog. A distant chickadee.
A juvenile buck chases a much larger doe through the laurel, knobs for antlers and his grunts still half-bleat. The damp woods glistening.
At 7:30 a raven flaps over, cronking. Ten minutes later, a maelstrom of crows and ravens in the woods beside the powerline: fresh gut pile.
By midmorning, all the white crosses left by jets have disappeared into another cloudless sky. A soft bang as a junco side-swipes a window.
When I turn to go in, I’m struck by the cherry tree’s shadow, how the sun divided by the forest canopy multiplies each branch by three.
One grown fawn attempts to nurse; the other runs into the woods, ducking its head as if pursued by some horsefly impervious to the cold.
A finger of sun infiltrates the foxtail millet, heads turned every direction but up. Three chickadees forage in the cherry, comparing notes.
Two squirrels from the gray woods drop into the lilac and leap from branch to branch, disappearing for long moments into its freakish green.
Bright and cold. A blue jay practices its red-tailed hawk scream at the top of a scarlet oak, half the leaves still there and gleaming.
The doe’s gray coat blends into the November woods, her two grown fawns still brown. They nuzzle through the leaf duff, feasting on acorns.
Almost light, and a screech owl still calls from down in the hollow—that sepulchral whinny. One croak of a crow stops it cold.
The wind rustles in the crown of one red oak; all the others are still. A train whistle. The light patches in the clouds fade to blue.