Walnut leaves are scattered all over the porch. What was the wind up to while I slept? In the woods, a migrant thrush expresses mild alarm.
black walnut
A squirrel hurls itself from maple to locust, falling, grabbing hold. It runs to the end of a limb and stops, staring across at the walnut.
Moon in the morning sky like a broken plate. Squirrels are climbing walnut trees and descending with fat green globes between their teeth.
The clouds thicken, gravid with rain. A squirrel climbing the walnut tree next to the road pauses on the first limb to lick its genitals.
A squirrel on the lowest branch of the walnut tree next to the road scolds something hidden in the goldenrod, shaking with each harsh cry.
Leaves turn over in a breeze—a small shock-wave from a far-off storm. A flock of yellow walnut leaves breaks free, fluttering to the ground.
While the male chickadee calls from the end of a walnut branch, his mate combs the leaves for caterpillars, hovering, hanging upside-down.
Pausing every few minutes for a lightning-quick copulation, a pair of downy woodpeckers circle a walnut tree trunk and probe its bark.
Sunny and warm. A squirrel crossing the old corral with a disinterred walnut in its mouth follows the shadow of an oak tree into the woods.
Squirrels on the ground: one makes a detour to run along a fallen tree, another digs a walnut out of the dirt and buries it in the snow.
A gray squirrel explores a walnut tree, nose down, following each limb to its end. I decide it’s searching for seeds cached by the birds.
A brown creeper ascends the trunk of a walnut tree, its jerky scuttling more insect-like than avian. Up on the ridge, a furious mob of crows.
A heavy frost sparkles in the yard. A foot from my chair, the only four walnut-leaf nibs on the porch are clustered in the shape of a rune.
A chickadee in the walnut tree flits from twig to twig, swiping its bill twice against each, then drops into the creek for a quick drink.