In the green and yellow woods, here and there a red branch. But the kinglets in the birches hide their ruby crowns under olive-green shocks.
black birch
September 29, 2015
I wake from a dream of a pub that served nothing but wheat beer to endless rain on yellow leaves: birch and elm, walnut and tulip tree.
September 7, 2015
Where the sun shines through elms and birches, almost half the leaves are already yellow. In the meadow, the goldenrod is at its height.
May 3, 2015
The woods’ edge is a collage of pastels: just-opened leaves, catkins, maple keys. The old cherry stump chirps like a phone: baby bluebirds.
December 26, 2014
The sky is clearing, the low-angled, mid-morning sun illuminating the woods for minutes at a time. Finches in the birches. A distant raven.
November 9, 2014
Siskins like moveable leaves in a bare birch. A squirrel chiseling a skull-hard walnut falls silent when it reaches the soft cerebrum.
November 4, 2014
Warmer and overcast. The silhouettes of small birds feeding gregariously in the top of a black birch—goldfinches, I realize when they fly.
September 22, 2014
Wind shuffles the suddenly yellow leaves of elm and birch—their marked decks. A fly wanders the inside of a window pane on sticky feet.
May 4, 2014
This spring is like a familiar symphony slowed way down. Grace notes become held notes: birch catkins. Bud-burst in the black cherry trees.
March 3, 2014
Fresh from drinking out of the cold stream, a chickadee swipes its bill rapidly against a twig, then goes to join the others in the birches.
January 3, 2014
The croak of a raven followed by a tree popping in the cold, loud as a gunshot. A chickadee flits through the branches of a birch, singing.
October 7, 2013
The silhouettes of small birds (goldfinches?) darting through the crown of a black birch as wind and driving rain strip it of leaves.
October 3, 2013
Every morning more shards of ridge-top sky are visible through the trees. In the black birch’s yellow crown, yellow-rumped warblers.
October 1, 2013
With every gust of wind, a mob of yellow leaves comes swirling out over the meadow. From just inside the woods’ edge, the crash of a limb.