Sun shimmers on a tangle of frizzy brown hair snagged on a nail. I release it into the yard—good nesting material for some small mammal.
Plummer’s Hollow
Cool and autumnal. In the overgrown garden, a faded spicebush swallowtail searches the faded orange cups of butterfly milkweed for a drink.
A heavy sky, gravid with rain. In the town a mile and a half way, a fire siren—that hortatory wail. Then the ululations of the trucks.
The clouds of white snakeroot in my yard host one tiger swallowtail, glamorous as a celebrity in a trailer court. A raven’s metallic croak.
Five cabbage whites gadding about in the garden draw my attention to a tangle of crested buckwheat, red stems threaded through the bergamot.
The sudden crash of a limb breaks the stillness. A red admiral butterfly lands beside my book, wings opening and closing—a wilder text.
A warm morning, and all I hear are the birds of winter: chickadee, nuthatch, pileated woodpecker. A dead cranefly dangles from a spiderweb.
Cool with a scrim of cloud. From high in the canopy, a scarlet tanager’s hoarse song—the first in weeks. A sudden sweet smell I can’t place.
A female hummingbird leaves the beebalm to check out the red lettering on my t-shirt, a sleek green torpedo hovering inches from my chest.
The cicada chorus ebbs and swells. I notice the big tulip tree has shed all its drought-yellowed leaves from a month ago and is green again.
A wash of cirrus below the moon’s inverted bowl. A northern pearly-eye butterfly perches on the porch, bullseyes shining on its underwings.
I wish I had names for all the filmy-winged insects that appear like spirits when the light is strong and the shadows behind them are deep.
A wren calls from the cattails like a deranged cheerleader, while in the woods, a vireo sounds as if it’s barely able to give a damn.
Rain. A squirrel crouches atop a maple burl, gray fur almost invisible against the gray bark, curled tail like a snake poised to strike.