The squirrel is still stealing twigs from the top of the tall black locust. Food? Bedding? I picture the hidden nest: a crown of thorns.
Overcast and cool. I pull a few clumps of stiltgrass and my hand starts to itch—chiggers? The high, strangled calls of a raven.
Like a maple key out of season, but far lighter, it spirals ever so slowly down onto the porch floor: a small white moth’s hind wing.
At 52 degrees, hornets are already going in and out of their gray globe in the weeds. I watch the sunrise by inference on the western ridge.
At last the garden cricket has a rival. They creak slowly back and forth. I scan the western sky for what’s left of last night’s moon.
It starts to rain. A hover fly lands on the rim of my mug, its thin, yellow-banded abdomen twitching like a nervous and anorexic bee.
A cyanide millipede—black segments edged in orange, yellow cilia undulating—flows through the garden like a dangerous amusement park ride.
In the springhouse marsh, 13 cattail spikes are turning brown. When I go over for a closer look, a deer pops her head up, swivels her ears.
The small cross of a plane against the blue, its distant drone. A flicker climbing the dead elm loses his footing on a patch of sunlight.
The vibrating of a dead branch…
The vibrating of a dead branch from which a bird has just flown. In a funnel spider web among the weeds, 14 raindrops from the last storm.
Three hummingbirds circle the blowsy remains of the bergamot at sunrise. One lands on a bare twig and grooms her breast feathers.
Highway noise from over the ridge; a whiff of diesel. A downy woodpecker going up the dead elm passes a nuthatch going down.
Two male towhees trade tweets from opposite sides of the yard. At the top of the dead cherry tree, a goldfinch swivels back and forth.
The catnip’s in bloom beside the porch: clusters of tiny white blossoms dotted in purple, each with a front stoop to tempt passing bees.