Commotion from the Cooper’s hawks just inside the woods. One darts out and flies across the field: sleek missile body, thin blades of wings.
Dave Bonta
The bergamot is beginning to open, a wash of purple spreading from inner bracts to adjacent leaves as if heralding the rise of a purple sun.
A halictid bee pivots in the black…
A halictid bee pivots in the black-eyed susan, a metallic green mote. At the end of one petal, a deerfly dries those anti-petals, its wings.
That buzz from just inside the woods: chipping sparrow or worm-eating warbler? The four-fingered tulip tree leaves flip back and forth.
The first beebalm’s forked, scarlet tongues. Nearby on a still-green bergamot bud, a netwing beetle’s antennae test the sudden sunlight.
Sunny, hot and windy—an odd combination. The forest murmurs like surf on a hot day at the beach. An orange butterfly zooms past at 60 mph.
No trains are running. The black-and-white warbler’s quiet wheeze competes only with the distant vuvuzelas of rubber on road.
Two crows sail out of the woods with a smaller bird in hot pursuit: the Cooper’s hawk. He lands in the dead elm and ruffles his feathers.
Solstice sun in the treetops. The lilac quivers as two titmice move through, grooming it for insects. A fawn dances out into the meadow.
The sun-struck meadow gives off a thin mist. From the front window, the tap of a female cardinal’s bill against her rival in the glass.
The garlic in my yard has a conspiratorial air, heads coiled, beaks thrust in every direction. Nearby, a lone wild onion’s Medusa hair.
A catbird mimics the wood thrush, call-and-response style, getting the phrasing right but little else. Venus fades into the dawn sky.
A robber fly rides a wind-blown leaf like a sailor on the deck of a heaving ship, sun catching the life-preserver orange of its thorax.
Just inside the woods, the soft clucks of a hen turkey trailed by a single chick. A thrush song sounds like a threnody—slow, sad notes.