The ornamental cherry’s last leaves are dying. A silent wood thrush watches a tanager so scarlet it throbs in the light-drenched crown.
A rustle from the top of a tall locust: two great blue herons jab at the thorny twigs, spread their wings and launch into the bluest sky.
A small yellow flower lures me down off the porch to find a new species for the yard: fringed loosestrife. Sounds like a biker-chick brawl.
In the deer-ravaged rosebush in the middle of the yard, I spot a bald-faced hornet’s nest, its dark opening fixed on the half-dead cherry.
My mind drifts. At what precise angle of sun, I wonder, does the light lose its magic? I glance over and meet a deer’s unreadable eyes.
A phoebe pecks at the porch roof, then lands in the cherry tree with its feathers puffed out against the cold. The waning moon.
Commotion from the Cooper’s hawks just inside the woods. One darts out and flies across the field: sleek missile body, thin blades of wings.
The bergamot is beginning to open, a wash of purple spreading from inner bracts to adjacent leaves as if heralding the rise of a purple sun.
A halictid bee pivots in the black…
A halictid bee pivots in the black-eyed susan, a metallic green mote. At the end of one petal, a deerfly dries those anti-petals, its wings.
That buzz from just inside the woods: chipping sparrow or worm-eating warbler? The four-fingered tulip tree leaves flip back and forth.
The first beebalm’s forked, scarlet tongues. Nearby on a still-green bergamot bud, a netwing beetle’s antennae test the sudden sunlight.
Sunny, hot and windy—an odd combination. The forest murmurs like surf on a hot day at the beach. An orange butterfly zooms past at 60 mph.
No trains are running. The black-and-white warbler’s quiet wheeze competes only with the distant vuvuzelas of rubber on road.
Two crows sail out of the woods with a smaller bird in hot pursuit: the Cooper’s hawk. He lands in the dead elm and ruffles his feathers.