I feel a ground beetle walking up my leg, under my jeans. How do I know it isn’t an ant or a cockroach? The feet make a solid connection.
July 3, 2008
A juvenile robin grooming in the cherry tree, light feathers dotting its dark back—scruffy as a teenage boy’s first beard. The sun comes up.
July 2, 2008
First light. A low-frequency buzz passes between the back of my head and the house. Wood thrush song in the distance—an incoming tide.
July 1, 2008
The dawn chorus begins just as it does in January: with cardinal song. High above the atmosphere, a satellite catches the first rays of sun.
June 30, 2008
I realize suddenly that my yard is devoid of bull thistles this year. Could the goldfinches really have consumed every one of the seeds?
June 29, 2008
Another butterfly weed has been stripped. It’s supposed to taste awful, but maybe it’s psychotropic. Anything that orange must be dangerous.
June 28, 2008
The catbird sounds self-critical, adding a brief aside after every phrase. The chipping sparrow’s never-ending alarm sets a cricket off.
June 27, 2008
Another reason not to mow the lawn: a male common yellowthroat feeds a querulous fledgling in the tall grass directly in front of the porch.
June 26, 2008
A shower blows in. Like late at night when the fridge cycles off, it takes me a second to place the sudden silence: the cicadas stopped.
June 25, 2008
A squirrel is making a nest in a black locust with small branches it bites off a little higher up, plundering the roof to build the floor.
June 24, 2008
54°F. A cranefly clings to my elbow, landing gear spread wide as its clear wings flutter in the breeze, flags for the kingdom of water.
June 23, 2008
Four titmice flit about the yard. The dead elm twigs that are closest to the lilac have acquired a greenish tinge. A beetle’s zigzag flight.
June 22, 2008
A fawn follows its mother through the springhouse meadow, spots like stars on a pelt dark with moisture from the sopping-wet vegetation.
June 21, 2008
A squirrel is exploring the dead elm at the edge of the yard, racing to the shakey end of each decrepit branch and peering into the abyss.