In a lull between showers, the sideways shimmy of birch and black cherry leaves. One of the neighbors’ hens begins to screech.
black cherry
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.
Gray rain ripples the air—November’s fur blurring the last splashes of bright October: salmon-colored cherry leaves, a vivid limb of maple.
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.
The woods’ edge is a collage of pastels: just-opened leaves, catkins, maple keys. The old cherry stump chirps like a phone: baby bluebirds.
This spring is like a familiar symphony slowed way down. Grace notes become held notes: birch catkins. Bud-burst in the black cherry trees.
The sun fades from blaze to smolder to smear. I notice a bent-down cherry limb that looks like a dancer—something I won’t be able to un-see.
Rain in the wee hours has left the lilac with leaves bent over, showing their pale backs. Above, the white missiles of black cherry blooms.
The new black cherry leaves, unmarred by any insect, are showing their pale backs to the sky, like hatchling fish unsure of how to swim.
A squirrel climbs to the top of a black cherry tree, samples a budding leaf and dashes back down. The aspens wear a new, gray-green fur.
The first blooming tall goldenrod glows yellow at the woods’ edge. In a cherry tree, a fall webworm tent enshrouds a garland of dead leaves.
Rusty things: the wail of a cat in heat, a squirrel’s slow scold, the cry of a jay, and the black cherry leaves fading to a coppery red.
Random lilac, red maple and black cherry leaves have flipped over, exposing their pale undersides—evidence of a downpour in the wee hours.
A tiger swallowtail is laying eggs on the lilac and black cherry, dabbing each leaf with the tip of her abdomen, wings fighting the breeze.