6:30 a.m. and the woods are virtually devoid of birdsong. It takes me half an hour to notice the crickets in the grass, that steady ringing.
Dave Bonta
Clear sky, but the sun in the treetops is a little wan, as if filtered through a dirty window. Traffic sounds carry from over the ridge.
My brother’s new car sits in the weeds, sleek and white, like an emissary from another world come to repatriate the plastic stack chairs.
At the end of one refrain, a mourning dove pauses and adds an extra syllable, as if correcting itself. The cheery yellow of St. John’s wort.
Close your eyes and it could be any season: a Carolina wren; a scolding nuthatch; twittering finches; a loud, hoarse cough up in the woods.
A solitary or blue-headed vireo—”more deliberate, higher, sweeter” (Peterson) than its red-eyed cousin—calling at the edge of the woods.
A bumblebee working the bergamot clambers over a green shield bug that’s rooted to its straw, a tiny leaf swelling on a sap-filled stem.
A bat swoops past my face—a puff of wind. The interminable whistle of a train creeping toward the crossing. A sliver of moon.
A patch of a deer-tongue grass a mere three feet from my porch—how come I never noticed it before? Am I too busy to watch the grass grow?
In the almost still air, one long walnut leaf pivots like a hand on a wrist. A tiny caterpillar floats past my face on an invisible tether.
A crashing sound from the springhouse meadow: a pair of bucks chasing each other, frisky as fawns and neck-deep in weeds they do not eat.
Clear sky, 55°F. A cicada and a wood pewee singing at the same time: Sunlight! Shadows! Up in the other house, the phones begin to ring.
Fast-moving showers; the light changes from minute to minute. A distant rumble turns out to be an A-10 Thunderbolt II—our modems are safe.
This time of year, every wood thrush song I hear could be the last. I listen hard. Inside on the table, the covers of paperbacks curl up.