A planetary conjunction slowly infiltrated by cirrus stained the color of dawn. A barred owl calls and a wild turkey answers.
Plummer’s Hollow
Cool and clearing. A hummingbird pauses on her way past the porch, attracted by the floorboards’ peeling red paint.
A lull between showers; the avian chorus swells. Each recumbent lily-of-the-valley leaf cradles a collection of raindrops.
Overcast and cool. In the garden, lily-of-the-valley flowers have faded to brown like old lampshades, while irises stick out their velvety tongues.
Sun through thin clouds. A half-grown bobcat comes out of the woods and crouches in the road, looking just like all the photos, returning my gaze.
Heavily overcast and cool. The black cherry trees at the woods’ edge point the fingers of their inflorescences in every direction but down.
Half awake at half-light. The dawn chorus starts promptly at 5:00 with field sparrow and towhee, then song sparrow, phoebe, robin. Train horn.
The humid air is full of insects, filmy wings shining in the sun. In the herb garden, yellow eyes with white lashes: daisy fleabane in bloom.
Just inside the trees, a young male turkey displays in silence, passing through a sunbeam, stalking slowly up the old woods road brandishing his tail.
Rain. The hummingbird darts out to drink from her favorite spiderweb. Indigo bunting like the one blue leaf.
At the top of a dead stalk in the yard, a cup-shaped spiderweb retains drops of fog. A hummingbird circles, taking little sips.
The last cool morning of the week, they say. A turkey gobbling up on the ridge, as usual. A hen or a hunter yelps back.
Cool and clear as a morning in October. A catbird fresh from his bath picks insects off dogwood leaves with a fussy chirp between each morsel.
Fog buzzing and thrumming with bird calls, filling in where half-sized leaves are still working toward the hegemony of green: pea soup indeed.