A harvestman stilting across the porch stops to poke each fallen walnut leaf. Up in the woods, the sudden squirrel rattle that means Hawk.
September 23, 2010
Thick fog at daybreak, as if the bright moon of 2am had spread a kind of mildew over the mountain. Train whistle. A nuthatch’s nasal call.
September 22, 2010
Dawn breeze. The whine of tires from the highway over the ridge is punctuated by the heavy thwacks of falling walnuts.
September 21, 2010
I finally realize what sage leaves remind me of, rough with papillae, moist with dew: but for the gray-green color, they could be tongues.
September 20, 2010
Sitting in the garden while the porch’s new coat of paint dries, I notice the peony leaves too have turned red. A waxwing’s glossy calls.
September 19, 2010
A succession of anxious or querulous calls—nuthatch, crow, Cooper’s hawk, pileated woodpecker—until sunrise reddens the western ridge.
September 18, 2010
The valleys must be brimming over with fog. Clouds rise behind both ridges, but it’s blue overhead: a white-bread sandwich filled with sky.
September 17, 2010
Due to the drought, the goldenrod display is subdued this year—but birch are turning three weeks early. September will have its yellow.
September 16, 2010
Walnut at the tip of a bent-down limb: a squirrel gets close, retreats, tries again. Abandons the tree for an oak, tail twitching.
September 15, 2010
Birdcalls are distant, intermittent. I’m reading about Auschwitz and thinking, it’s vital to learn the names. Someday it may be all we have.
September 14, 2010
First rays of sun on the garden, and already a monarch is drinking from the half-opened asters, orange panes of its wings trembling, aglow.
September 13, 2010
Ground fog forms at dawn in the bottom corner of the meadow and quickly dissipates. The screech owl’s quaver gives way to soft thrush calls.
September 12, 2010
Rain at last! A gentle tapping on the roof. The parched aster in my garden half-opens its first purple eye.
September 11, 2010
I hear it before I see it through the trees, crackling and popping in the tinder-dry sticks and leaf litter: a small herd of deer.