Overcast with a shimmer of light rain. A red-eyed vireo still calls at the woods’ edge. The thud of a black walnut onto a roof.
black walnut
The first yellow leaves on the walnuts: it’s late summer already. The fog hides trees and reveals old spiderwebs like messages in invisible ink.
Cool beginning to another scorcher. A fly goes for a walk down a porch column. The thud of a walnut on the road.
Another phantom shower, existing only on the weather app. A firefly wanders past, looking for a walnut leaf to spend the day under.
A black-and-white warbler probes the cracks between the floorboards for soft bits of grit and hair to line its nest, high in a walnut tree.*
*Or not. See here.
Clear and cool. A gnatcatcher scoops a caterpillar off a walnut leaf and swipes it against a branch three times before swallowing.
Dawn, and all the stream’s voices are raised. A squirrel finds a black walnut sticking out of a snowbank and races off with it.
Finches cluster high in a black birch, gorging in silence. A squirrel digs up a walnut and re-buries it on the other side of the road.
Cold, overcast, and nearly still: my clouds of breath drift sideways, leading my eye to a half-shell of black walnut, its empty brain case.
The first day of meteorological winter. It’s warm. I-99 is barely audible. The sound of teeth on walnut shell alternates with scold-calls.
Rain and fog. With the goldenrod going gray, the yellow has moved from the meadow to the woods’ edge: spicebush, walnut, birch, elm, tulip tree.
Overcast at dawn. The silence is broken by the periodic splats of black walnuts. A barred owl’s single, round note.
Clear and still. A double splat of black walnuts onto the driveway. At the top of an oak, a crow grooms itself with a soft clicking sound.
The unfamiliar clouds of my breath. A phoebe calling in the sun-drenched crown of a walnut tree, beneath that old slice of apple, the moon.