The French lilac, backlit by the sun, shimmers like a bright green sail against the still-open woods. A field sparrow’s rising trill.
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This will be the last new update until May 17th; I’m off to the U.K. to give a poetry reading and visit friends.
Two squirrels grappling or grooming on a thin tulip poplar branch, among nubbins of new leaves. One slips and falls 30 feet to the ground.
Up in the field, a turkey erects his traveling theater and poses for an audience of two. The first hummingbird hovers in front of my face.
A song so familiar it takes several minutes to register that this is new, the first I’ve heard it since last fall: common yellowthroat.
Thanks to insomnia, I have two mornings: one with ground fog lit by the waning moon at dawn, the other hot and abuzz with carpenter bees.
A white haze on the bank above the road: the shadbush is finally beginning to blossom. A brown thrasher in the yard says everything twice.
Peonies have broken ground: skinny red claws reaching for the light. The whining clucks of a hen turkey separated from the flock.
Four gray squirrels interrupt their chasing to scold the feral cat—a Two Minutes’ Hate. In the corner of my eye, the zip of a winter wren.
The sun glows faintly through the clouds like a coin at the bottom of a fountain. Three flickers bicker above the springhouse.
Even the invaders’ spring is late: barberry, lilac, multiflora rose just now leafing out, the hated myrtle purpling what used to be a lawn.
Where the moon had glowed through ground fog at 4:00, now the sun glimmers. Four ruby-crowned kinglets flutter in and out of the lilac.
An accelerated tapping on the roof—who ordered rain? One bird says Konkerlee, another, Drink your tea. Takes me a second to sort them out.
The thin forsythia at the woods’ edge is in bloom at last. Two towhees battle over territory: rival renditions of the same six-note trill.
The rain’s stopped, and high winds rearrange the clouds, holes opening and closing as if in a game of chance: guess which one hides the sun.