The Japanese stiltgrass is beginning to redden from the stems out. My niece goes up and down the road in the car, learning to drive.
Plummer’s Hollow
Another cold, clear morning. A chipmunk finds a patch of sun from which to tick, like a self-winding alarm clock set for fall.
Cold and clear—the clearest air in months. The strong sunlight reveals that it is full of motes and insects, more silk than soup.
A small woodpecker has found a resonant snag and works it for all it’s worth. A rival responds, but his rattle is too thin and he quits.
Two bucks wander past in patchy, shedding coats, spike antlers curved like the horns of anorexic bulls. One pauses to snack on lilac leaves.
A wood pewee calls from the edge of the meadow. The air has turned autumnal. The sun comes out and doubles the number of yellow leaves.
A mantis clings upside-down to a porch column. I wave a mosquito in its direction, and it turns its head to watch the ungainly craft fly by.
The den hole in the dead elm seems less than empty, like an eye socket in a skull. A single-prop plane goes over, hidden by the clouds.
In the half-light of dawn, white snakeroot glowing in the meadow, the unending shhhhh of tree crickets, clatter of a squirrel venturing out.
A jay’s call isn’t harsh, a nuthatch’s isn’t querulous: so hard to hear the music of what happens. Every day some poet dies from the strain.
The birch tree trembles with a flock of migrant warblers; I catch flashes of yellow and olive green. A yellow leaf tumbles to the ground.
Nothing but the sound of rain—or rather, the sound of everything being struck by the rain. A robber fly zigzags into the woods.
A hornet nuzzles my arm like a hoverfly but doesn’t sting. In the garden, the buzz of hummingbirds dueling over scraps of bloom.
Leaves turn over in a breeze—a small shock-wave from a far-off storm. A flock of yellow walnut leaves breaks free, fluttering to the ground.