Overcast and cool. At the edge of the cattail marsh, among the smartweed and tearthumb, I spot a lone stalk of purple loosestrife rocking gently in the breeze.
cattails
Five degrees below freezing and still. A red-winged blackbird calls from a sunlit treetop above the springhouse and its tiny cattail marsh.
Overcast; the smell of rain. Cattail leaves rattle faintly. A few tiny patches of snow linger in the tall grass.
Sunny and hot. The meadows hum with insects. In the marsh, a male and female goldfinch are gathering cattail down for their nest.
In the hot sun, a bit of floating down from a cattail, or a dandelion—some faux feline thing, which of course will land on its feet.
Unseasonably warm. A bluebottle fly descends a porch column as slowly as a sleepwalker. A bit of cattail down drifts back and forth.
I find my chair where the wind left it at the far end of the porch with a cracked back. Dried cattail leaves flap like banners for the dead.
After a cold night, the gift of clarity: a mote of drifting cattail down visible at 100 yards. A raven croaking on high is echoed by a crow.
Frost on the bent-down blades of cattails. Two single-prop planes from different directions—their drones blending then separating again.
A hint of winter in the way the dead cattail leaves hiss and rattle. But in the garden, a few coneflowers still brandish tattered suns.
White sky. The sun is a bright spot like the eye of a blind cave salamander. Doves flutter up from the cattails on piccolo wings.
A few snowflakes scud past. The dried blades of cattail next to the springhouse rattle and hiss. A dead leaf on the road flips over.
Cool and extraordinarily clear. With the sun on its gable end, the old springhouse glows like a lost tooth among the dark, swaying cattails.
Catbird caterwauling by the cattails. Bumblebee buzzing in the bergamot. A gray fly walks the gray band of my sandal. The sun comes out.