Darkening sky. A downy woodpecker gleaning breakfast from the dead cherry’s flaking limbs pauses to scratch his face with one fast foot.
cherry tree
A Carolina wren swipes its bill back and forth on the end of a dead limb, as if sharpening a knife. A groundhog sneezes in the strong sun.
Strange morning: first a 20-MPH gust of wind out of a clear sky whips the treetops, then the dead cherry beside the porch fills with birds.
Another warm morning. I realize I like the dead cherry because it reminds me of winter. A young robin lands on a branch with its beak open.
A light drizzle. The one green leaf at the end of a branch on the otherwise dead cherry shakes itself dry and turns back into a hummingbird.
The dead cherry beside the porch is greening up, radiant with algae. I take deep lungfuls of actinomycetes spores, that odor of earth.
Scattered snowflakes wander back and forth like lost souls. I watch one explode against a branch of the dead cherry. The croak of a raven.
The rain has stopped; the forest cracks and crashes. Fallen branches ring the dead cherry, each bearing a row of broken teeth.
A titmouse lands in the dead cherry tree, reaches into the cracked bark, pulls out a sunflower seed and taps it open, pausing twice to sing.
A titmouse lands in the cherry, the streak in his breast the same rust as a tree sparrow’s cap, a broomsedge stem, these icicles at sunrise.
I pause at the door, coffee in hand: six juncos decorate the dead cherry, fat, motionless. A pileated woodpecker cackles at the wood’s edge.
When I turn to go in, I’m struck by the cherry tree’s shadow, how the sun divided by the forest canopy multiplies each branch by three.
A finger of sun infiltrates the foxtail millet, heads turned every direction but up. Three chickadees forage in the cherry, comparing notes.
Halfway up the dead cherry beside the porch, a gray squirrel stops and stares, and I recall reading that squirrels are omnivorous as rats.