Outlined against the sky, the birch with its finches like leaves animated by separate winds. A downy woodpecker rattles in the cherry snag.
black birch
Thursday October 27, 2016
Goldfinches repopulate a leafless birch and sit eating seeds. From the east, the sound of the quarry’s crusher, its breakfast of stones.
Saturday October 22, 2016
Snowflakes backlit by the sun. Unlike rain they don’t just fall; they fly. A strip of bark is draped over a birch twig like a spare tie.
Friday October 21, 2016
After last night’s storm, all the birches and maples at the woods’ edge have lost their bright leaves, the oaks beyond still a sombre green.
Monday September 26, 2016
The yellow is moving up from the goldenrod to the birches, tulip trees and elms. A red-bellied woodpecker’s shrill calls end in a trill.
Friday September 23, 2016
A dead hornet lies on her back beside my chair with her six legs folded neatly over her thorax. At the woods’ edge, a rain of yellow leaves.
Sunday July 03, 2016
A worm-eating warbler ventures out to the woods’ edge, picking caterpillars from the leaves of a birch like an oxpecker grooming a buffalo.
Thursday June 02, 2016
In a lull between showers, the sideways shimmy of birch and black cherry leaves. One of the neighbors’ hens begins to screech.
Saturday April 23, 2016
The black birches are in blossom—gray catkins dangling like understated feather boas. Nothing like the wild pear tree’s blaring white.
Thursday October 22, 2015
Breezy and warm. A tulip-tree samara helicopters past the porch. In one of the bare birches, a single katydid plays his worn rasp.