Scattered crow caws coalesce into a flash mob filled with rage, but dissipate in less than a minute. High up in the clouds, a raven croaks.
Plummer’s Hollow
Recovering from a fever, I sit in strong sunlight with nature’s grand spectacle of slow death and decay spread out before me.
Rainy and dark, with a steady, fluttering fall of leaves. A freight train rumbling up the valley is the only thing audible over the rain.
Clear and still. The witch hazel in the garden has just opened its first blooms, spidery petals a far purer yellow than the curling leaves.
Sunrise turns the western ridge red. A squirrel falls out of a walnut tree and lands with a thump in weeds white with the first frost.
A few degrees above freezing. Three titmice drop out of the sunlit oaks to investigate the dead elm, en route to a quick bath in the stream.
Gusty winds. The sun appears several times a minute to light up the forest, which today is noticeably more open, yellower, more ablaze.
It’s pouring. Lichens glow on rain-dark trees, pale blue and green rashes. Through a thickening carpet of fallen leaves, the bright moss.
A jay walks the metal ridge of the springhouse roof, where a tangled mass of Virginia creeper has stretched red tentacles over the shingles.
The flashing light on the meter-reader’s truck emerges from the fog. The meadow is dotted with the white, inverted tents of funnel spiders.
Another overcast morning. I can see yellow leaves falling way off in the woods like unschooled fish spiralling into the depths.
Overcast and still. The oaks are dropping their acorns, filling the forest with random thumps and bangs. A gray squirrel’s raspy whine.
In the valley, two train whistles—one high, one low. Down-hollow, two drumming woodpeckers—likewise. A clearing wind dries the heavy dew.
A pileated woodpecker lands on the dead elm with a rattle of wings, the elm swaying. Below in the lilac a titmouse hammers away at an acorn.