As always when the air is clear and the sun at a low angle, I’m astonished by how many small insects drift back and forth between the trees.
Plummer’s Hollow
A pileated woodpecker heading for the tall locusts lets out a whoop with every wingbeat, its crest like the bloody barb of a harpoon.
The storm just past, a bald-faced hornet flies back and forth over the flattened stiltgrass. The crickets pick up where they left off.
Darkening sky. A downy woodpecker gleaning breakfast from the dead cherry’s flaking limbs pauses to scratch his face with one fast foot.
Clear and cold. In their communal tent, the caterpillars lie still as mummies in a tomb—gray forms already in their burial wrappings.
Crystal-clear at sunrise: I’m aware of every smudge and scratch on my glasses. A wood pewee’s call reduced to a single, interrogatory note.
Power out, I spend the morning on the porch. A large, black assassin bug lands on the sunny side of a column and stalks up toward the roof.
Drizzle, and from the woods, the steady dripping that makes it sound as if the real rain is there, on the far side of the yard. Slug trail.
A honeybee conducts a slow inspection of the porch railing, including my boots. I’m pondering the secret cousinship of wrens and crickets.
Thin fog. A spiderweb spread like a handkerchief a few inches above the ground has a large collection of raindrops, each of them perfect.
A dark, damp morning. The neighbors stop by with bags of chicken mushroom, freshly picked from where it glowed in the depths of the hollow.
Humid, yet still so dry that the lilac leaves hang limply. In my last dream before waking, I couldn’t find the exit from an endless mall.
From the paper mill, the mournful note of the Protestant call to work. I watch an enormous horse-fly on the porch ceiling, ready to sprint.
A sodden baby woodchuck plows through the dripping garden and tumbles over the wall. A smell of burning plastic on the breeze.