A stratum of sunlit leaves forming in the forest understory. A cicada wakes up. Under the house, something coughs.
Plummer’s Hollow
The meadow and its crickets. The full moon emerges from the clouds upside-down in every drop of dew.
A few minutes after moonset, and the ground fog is still aglow. A screech owl’s monotone trill.
Sun in the trees and a small spot of orange beside the porch: a Mexican sunflower blooming despite having twice been dinner for a groundhog.
Cardinal joined by a whippoorwill. The white shapes in the yard turn out to be snakeroot.
Breezy with sometime sunshine. A hummingbird’s buzz grows louder as she hovers in front of a window, bill to bill with an unexpected rival.
Rain and warblers. An earth-shaking blast from the quarry two miles away. The soft susurrus of tree crickets.
Sunrise hidden by clouds. Towhee and cardinal’s usual soliloquies. A mosquito sings her need into my ear.
Cloudy with 100% chance of migrating warblers: the yard is briefly possessed. I hear a noise, turn my head and meet a rabbit’s critical gaze.
Ten minutes before first light, the first distant, barking dog. Ten minutes before that, a barred owl’s cackle.
Cloudy and cool. A hummingbird buzzes in, and I wonder if she’s the same one I saw in the woods yesterday sitting on a branch, almost still.
First light. A meteor slices through Orion below the belt, and I flinch like a spectator at a pro wrestling match.
Dawn. A bat zig-zags high over the meadow en route to its roost as the few clouds turn pink.
It’s still cool, but the air smells like heat. I watch a sulphur butterfly’s erratic flight path. Does even it know its next move?