Sun in the treetops where a catbird improvises. From the lilac, the song of a towhee, incorporated seconds later into the catbird’s stream.
Dave Bonta
Clear, 54°F. Squirrels leap through the dripping branches, chase each other up and down trunks. A distant traffic noise of cicadas.
The evening primroses I got from the Amish are in bloom: x-shaped stigmas extended like hands from the centers of large, plain faces.
In a hurry this morning, I go over to the garden, looking for anything of interest. Crickets. An old man with a stick comes down the road.
The weird weAHHHHHHHHHHHoh calls of 17-year cicadas join the morning chorus for the first time. A male scarlet tanager flashes past my feet.
The tulip poplar at the edge of the woods is in its glory, covered with yellow lotus-shaped blooms like a mandala emptied of its buddhas.
I prop my feet up on the rail,…
I prop my feet up on the rail, and within seconds, a blowfly lands on the toe of my left sandal and a syrphid fly on my right. It’s summer.
Tropical humidity. A tent caterpillar clings to the edge of my warped old end table like the last unrotted section of a Victorian fringe.
A hummingbird lands on the upturned tip of a dead elm branch; the branch doesn’t move a hair. The first open peony lies on its side.
Foggy morning. A short-lived bright period brings a faint sound of traffic from I-99. I hear the hummingbird’s small motor in the garden.
Two squirrels slowly circle the trunk of a walnut tree, gray against gray, frenetic tails sending Morse messages through the heartwood.
Sun in the tops of the tall locust trees. Even in blossom, they look disreputable—as if they’d been targeted by a passing flock of geese.
5:20. The bat returns to his roost in the crack between the porch roof and the house like a handkerchief returning to its pocket.
In the light rain, a squirrel feasts on red maple keys. Reduced to pieces, the blades flutter straight down, robbed of all ability to spin.