In a hurry this morning, I go over to the garden, looking for anything of interest. Crickets. An old man with a stick comes down the road.
The weird weAHHHHHHHHHHHoh calls of 17-year cicadas join the morning chorus for the first time. A male scarlet tanager flashes past my feet.
The tulip poplar at the edge of the woods is in its glory, covered with yellow lotus-shaped blooms like a mandala emptied of its buddhas.
I prop my feet up on the rail,…
I prop my feet up on the rail, and within seconds, a blowfly lands on the toe of my left sandal and a syrphid fly on my right. It’s summer.
Tropical humidity. A tent caterpillar clings to the edge of my warped old end table like the last unrotted section of a Victorian fringe.
A hummingbird lands on the upturned tip of a dead elm branch; the branch doesn’t move a hair. The first open peony lies on its side.
Foggy morning. A short-lived bright period brings a faint sound of traffic from I-99. I hear the hummingbird’s small motor in the garden.
Two squirrels slowly circle the trunk of a walnut tree, gray against gray, frenetic tails sending Morse messages through the heartwood.
Sun in the tops of the tall locust trees. Even in blossom, they look disreputable—as if they’d been targeted by a passing flock of geese.
5:20. The bat returns to his roost in the crack between the porch roof and the house like a handkerchief returning to its pocket.
In the light rain, a squirrel feasts on red maple keys. Reduced to pieces, the blades flutter straight down, robbed of all ability to spin.
In one direction, a singing wood thrush; in the other, a red-eyed vireo. Evocative refrain or dull repetition? It’s all in the delivery.
Clouds like scales on the belly of a blue fish. In the garden, ants immobilized by the cold cling to the sweet pink seams of peony buds.
The flower heads on the white lilac are half-brown now. Two phoebes take turns flying into the bush, momentarily quelling insistent peeps.