At the end of one refrain, a mourning dove pauses and adds an extra syllable, as if correcting itself. The cheery yellow of St. John’s wort.
Plummer’s Hollow
Close your eyes and it could be any season: a Carolina wren; a scolding nuthatch; twittering finches; a loud, hoarse cough up in the woods.
A solitary or blue-headed vireo—”more deliberate, higher, sweeter” (Peterson) than its red-eyed cousin—calling at the edge of the woods.
A bumblebee working the bergamot clambers over a green shield bug that’s rooted to its straw, a tiny leaf swelling on a sap-filled stem.
A bat swoops past my face—a puff of wind. The interminable whistle of a train creeping toward the crossing. A sliver of moon.
A patch of a deer-tongue grass a mere three feet from my porch—how come I never noticed it before? Am I too busy to watch the grass grow?
In the almost still air, one long walnut leaf pivots like a hand on a wrist. A tiny caterpillar floats past my face on an invisible tether.
A crashing sound from the springhouse meadow: a pair of bucks chasing each other, frisky as fawns and neck-deep in weeds they do not eat.
Clear sky, 55°F. A cicada and a wood pewee singing at the same time: Sunlight! Shadows! Up in the other house, the phones begin to ring.
Fast-moving showers; the light changes from minute to minute. A distant rumble turns out to be an A-10 Thunderbolt II—our modems are safe.
This time of year, every wood thrush song I hear could be the last. I listen hard. Inside on the table, the covers of paperbacks curl up.
Cool and misty—everything drips. A bumblebee clings to the underside of a bergamot bract; on the topside, an equally motionless ant.
A rare visit from an Acadian flycatcher, straying up from the deep hollow. It hovers above a cherry branch, skimming insects off wet leaves.
A bat lands on the inside end of the porch—right above the moon from where I sit—and crawls rapidly on its elbows toward the nearest crack.