Seeing the big maple silhouetted against the dawn sky, I notice for the first time it’s half dead. A clanking as the quarry comes to life.
Plummer’s Hollow
Too warm for a coat, too cool for a t-shirt. And in the grass weighted down with dew, the murmur of crickets. It feels like autumn.
A red-spotted purple butterfly emerges into the glare like an emissary from the shadows. In the front garden, a burst of wren chatter.
Clear and cool, but in the woods, last night’s rain is still reaching the ground, drop by shining drop. A wood pewee’s eponymous drawl.
A cicada lies on its back on the porch, legs churning the air. I turn it over and the dog gives it a good, close reading with her nose.
The porch floor shining in the sun, a dragonfly comes in to inspect it, flying right under my propped-up legs. The dry whisper of its wings.
Below the porch, I notice a single orange jewelweed overlooked by the deer. The hummingbird zips right past it on her way to the garden.
Cloudless and cool. A red-spotted purple and a silver-spotted skipper work adjacent bergamot heads, whose tubes are beginning to dry up.
The rain eases off at mid-morning, and once again a box turtle comes out of the woods and marches up the driveway with surprising haste.
The feral garlic top-heads have split their skins, unveiling clusters of beady eyes. The sun’s a glowing smudge. It’s going to be hot.
A bindweed flower is open in the garden—a white blunderbuss pointed, like the dog’s inquisitive snout, at the foggy woods.
Tussock moth caterpillars rappelling from a walnut limb. One changes its mind half way—a little white comma returning to its green sentence.
The box turtle whose territory my house happens to encroach upon sits in the driveway, yellow markings like a road sign in a foreign script.
Far off through the woods, the bell-like notes of three wood thrushes—young ones mastering the music of their tribe before they disperse.