I glance up from my reading to meet the sun’s bleary eye. A squirrel bent into a ball, dangling tail curled left, pauses—a semicolon pose.
Dave Bonta
The doe is turning from the top down, like a mountain: summer’s red has receded into her legs and belly. On the fawn, just five faint spots.
Every overcast morning is overcast in its own way. This one’s dull and slow, a gray squirrel on a small dead tree licking its genitals.
Labor Day. A spring peeper at dawn. In the great silence, I can hear the approach of what will turn into drizzle: the thinnest of whispers.
Overnight, two maples on the far side of the road have begun to go orange. And between me and them, a small pale spider with her tiny prey.
From the rummaging of some small bird of passage, a shower of yellow walnut leaves into the yellow yard, the tall Solidago. A catbird mews.
Thin fog at dawn. From the woods’ edge, the familiar two-syllable call of a scarlet tanager sounds suddenly very much like goodbye.
Focused on the view, I never noticed how the porch posts framing it lean several degrees to the right. I wonder if my hearing also is askew?
Ah, the inversion layers of autumn! A hummingbird materializes in front of me, her approach covered by the din, and studies my bright shirt.
Cold and clear, but one cricket still manages a slow creak. A nuthatch calls heh-heh-heh — so I didn’t dream that cackle outside my window!
The low-frequency hum of a passing jet vibrates the windows and the ladder’s metal rungs. A wren chatters alarm at the missing floorboards.
A squirrel emerges from the springhouse’s tiny attic vent and slides head-first toward the ground. A patch of sun shimmers in the goldenrod.
I glimpse the mother doe and her fawns running just inside the woods’ edge, hear the clatter of hooves going past. A minute of almost-sun.
Another overcast morning, with wind and the sound of trucks out of the east. Two thrushes and a gnatcatcher move silently through the lilac.