As so often in fall, a clear morning sky means not clarity but inversion—the bellowing of trucks. A yellow leaf lands with a soft click.
No matter how late I rise, the light still has that early-morning look—as today at 9:00, pooling golden at the entrance to the woods.
How to describe a monarch butterfly’s flight? Too straight for “flutter,” too erratic for “soar.” And this one—why is it heading north?
Days of rain, and the stream is only a gurgle. Even as the sky clears, in the woods the rain is still making its slow way to the ground.
A mottle-winged moth flops like a fish across the floor. A mosquito tries to drill through denim, her hind-most legs like levers going up.
Gauzy curtains of rain blow back and forth. A yellowish warbler darts through the lilac, harrying the dull-colored residents.
A hummingbird hovers over the red porch floor made glossy by wind-blown rain. A catbird on a dead limb tilts its head to eye the clouds.
The sound of rain as it thins to a whisper or thickens into heavy traffic: on the roof, on grass, on tree leaves toughened by a long summer.
Rain and fog. With the power out, the world looms frighteningly close. Off in the woods, a bright clearing where some tree came down.
The first two Asian stinkbugs stalk the porch posts and railings. I wave a foot at one of them and it drops to the floor with a dull thwack.
A hummingbird buzzes into the garden, and I follow her bill to the last bergamot flower’s four thin flagons. A truck clatters past.
A racket of jays in the crown of an oak, calling and making excited rattling sounds in their throats, as if cheering on the ripening acorns.
Mid-morning storm. A fox squirrel lopes through the patch of invasive myrtle, a slow flame the rain can’t quench.
A large flock of small birds in the trees at the edge of the woods, hovering, diving, fluttering up like brown leaves returning to the tree.