Everything moves in the wind but the broken dog statue, the dead rosebush, and the five-fingered cherry stump raised as if in surrender.
Plummer’s Hollow
Batting away a hornet hovering next to my legs—the softness of its wings. A chipmunk adds its metronome to the chorus of bird calls.
A weird cry, like an alarm clock keening for consummation: a lone 17-year cicada, far from the main body of its brood. It stops. It resumes.
Wind salted with rain. A male indigo bunting clings to a black cherry branch like the one blue leaf, fluttering with the rest.
Heard but not seen: two blue jays commenting on the woods below. Seen but not heard: two gray squirrels sneaking under the house.
The air is so clear, I can make out grains of pollen drifting back and forth against the dark woods. The shrill alarm-calls of a raven.
Phoebes mate in the rain, their thin branch bobbing as they touch tails. I crush a slow flood-water mosquito with a clap of my hands.
The walnut tree beside the road is in bloom—long green catkins like fringes on antique lampshades. A least skipper flits through the meadow.
Rain. A red-spotted purple lands on the top rail and spreads its dark wings like a damp umbrella. A jumping spider shelters under my foot.
In a lull between showers, the sideways shimmy of birch and black cherry leaves. One of the neighbors’ hens begins to screech.
A silver-spotted skipper flies back and forth in front of the porch a dozen times. A grackle comes in croaking for a drink from the creek.
I take my eye off the clear sky for a moment and suddenly there are clouds—four streaks beside the moon’s thin frown. Cerulean warbler song.
At the woods’ edge, three yellow hats: iris gone feral. A hummingbird rockets back and forth through the lilac, showing off for a female.
Exotic dancers of the Lepidoptera have names like Little Wood Satyr and Pearl Crescent. Their underwings bear black suns and crescent moons.