Sunrise, and the sky is clear. From behind the red ridge, two train whistles blow at the same time in different keys. A car door slams.
Plummer’s Hollow
A pair of Carolina wrens call back and forth across the yard, the female responding to each exuberant outpouring with the same terse note.
Dawn. A migrant wood thrush flits from branch to branch along the edge of the woods. In the yard, a grown fawn nuzzles its mother’s neck.
Colored leaves turn backwards in the cold wind—still the same pale green. A pileated woodpecker’s distant chant.
The dead cherry has shed two more limbs, yellow stubs shining dully like the eyes of a corpse. I find a conjoined apple in the fridge.
An explosive snort of a deer that I hadn’t noticed standing in the dim light at the edge of the woods, her ears swiveling toward the east.
Tiny holes riddle the leaves of a heal-all plant, turning it to orange-tinged lace. What small creature requires so much medicine?
The lowering sky lightens a little when the rain finally starts. Yellow leaves flutter down from the walnut tree like exhausted moths.
Cloud-to-cloud lightning, thunder like a cloth being torn. Downpour. We’ll remember 2011 for years: “That was the autumn of the mosquitoes.”
Overcast. The softly glowing reds and yellows, the hum of crickets, even the normally annoying call of a towhee all inspire nostalgia.
A mosquito’s thin song in my ear. I wave her away, then watch as she and another tangle, part, and settle upside-down on the white ceiling.
Rusty things: the wail of a cat in heat, a squirrel’s slow scold, the cry of a jay, and the black cherry leaves fading to a coppery red.
At the woods’ edge, the yellowest birch seethes with small birds—kinglets, I think. But by the time I fetch binoculars, the tree is still.
A series of high-pitched snorts from a deer up on the ridge. Coyote? Bear? Or—imagine the horror for an herbivore—an attack of hay fever?