Dark and rainy at sunrise, the cardinal like a pilot light in the recesses of the lilac chirping back and forth with his mate.
Plummer’s Hollow
Rainy and cold. The tall goldenrod heads are bowed, flowering downward. A squirrel’s keening alarm for a hawk.
Drizzle before dawn, settling into steady rain by daybreak. At the woods’ edge, two chirps from a towhee and the soft call of a migrant thrush.
Under a gray sky, small birds move silently through green and gold leaves, while the wren yammers away behind the shed.
Jays, then crows, then jays again: my kind of singers, harsh as life itself or hoarse with joy. The sun glimmers through high, thin clouds.
Clear and still, except for the periodic crashing down of a walnut, each one followed by a small entourage of yellow leaves. The sun clears the ridge and the trees reclaim their shadows.
8:00 o’clock church bells and the fog has nearly all lifted. A nuthatch calls down by the stream, soon joined by chickadees. From my mother’s house, the measured voices of NPR.
Heavily overcast and still—a perfect morning to watch walnut leaves fall: the flutterers, the gliders, the tumblers, the spirallers, and the rare ones that float straight down.
A white sky only now that the banks of white snakeroot are beginning to fade. In between: green and gold. The drought-struck lilac dying back.
Sun in the top of the tall tulip poplar—yellow crowning yellow. The last nighttime cricket falls silent. Off through the thinning woods, new chinks of sky.
Quiet and cool. A hummingbird hovers over the bright pink cover of my book: Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon.
Distant shots from a semi-automatic: poppoppoppoppoppop. The flutter of a falling leaf. A squirrel’s footsteps on the roof.
6:24. The cardinal sings a few times and falls silent. 6:26. The whippoorwill calls a few times and falls silent. 6:29. The Carolina wren starts up.
Cool and still with murky sunlight and yellow leaves dropping one by one. From the north and east, the guttural hum of industry—that drone note.