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.
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.
To the east, an agitated crow. Over by the cattails, an anxious wren. And behind me under the house, a groundhog bumps and scrapes.
When the wind stops, the big locust tree that’s been creaking ominously falls silent, and the long cattail leaves all hold their poses.