Under a clearing sky, nuthatch and vireo still claim and declaim. A black cherry tree, having dispensed its fruit, is turning a dull orange.
black cherry
5/24/2022
Heavily overcast and cool. The black cherry trees at the woods’ edge point the fingers of their inflorescences in every direction but down.
9/21/2021
Under a thinning white sky, the thinning crown of a black cherry tree already less green than salmon. The sunflowers face every direction.
5/22/2021
The black cherry blossoms are already fading, and the sun is going from dandelion-yellow to dandelion seedhead-white. Black-billed cuckoo.
5/21/2021
Cool morning. The melancholy sweetness of a wood thrush song. At the woods’ edge, the small black cherry has gone to bloom.
4/18/2021
In bright sun, the tulip poplar’s green torch beside a black cherry’s cloud of tiny pink leaves.
10/24/2020
Overcast and chilly, with enough of a breeze to make the salmon-colored cherry leaves shiver against an increasingly gray backdrop of woods.
6/3/2020
Thunderstorm just past, many leaves on the maple and black cherry trees remain upside-down, like pale, open palms turned toward the sky.
7/18/2016
Two chipmunks eating unripe drupes high in a black cherry tree suspend their usual hostilities. One jumps over the other when they meet.
6/8/2016
Wind salted with rain. A male indigo bunting clings to a black cherry branch like the one blue leaf, fluttering with the rest.
6/2/2016
In a lull between showers, the sideways shimmy of birch and black cherry leaves. One of the neighbors’ hens begins to screech.
4/28/2016
Cold drizzle. A brown thrasher improvises at the woods’ edge, and I spot the first tent caterpillar web—a tiny white flag in a wild cherry.
10/28/2015
Gray rain ripples the air—November’s fur blurring the last splashes of bright October: salmon-colored cherry leaves, a vivid limb of maple.
6/13/2015
Overcast and cool. It takes me a while to notice that a cherry tree has fallen into the meadow 50 feet away, half-buried in the tall weeds.