A black-throated blue warbler alights in the dead cherry. I follow it to the spicebush, where yellow-throated vireos sing bright red notes.
cherry tree
A blue-gray gnatcatcher drops into the dead cherry and begins to forage, singing its small hoarse note. Beads of rain wobble but don’t fall.
The fog has outlined every spider web, making the dead cherry look like the Flying Dutchman, tattered sails ghosting in the breeze.
A titmouse combs the dead cherry tree for insects, his black seed of an eye and wizard’s cap bobbing as he snaps at shriveled leaves.
Two male towhees trade tweets from opposite sides of the yard. At the top of the dead cherry tree, a goldfinch swivels back and forth.
Fresh buds have appeared on one of the two wild grape sprigs I planted at the base of the dead cherry. A nuthatch calls in the growing heat.
The ornamental cherry’s last leaves are dying. A silent wood thrush watches a tanager so scarlet it throbs in the light-drenched crown.
In the deer-ravaged rosebush in the middle of the yard, I spot a bald-faced hornet’s nest, its dark opening fixed on the half-dead cherry.
A phoebe pecks at the porch roof, then lands in the cherry tree with its feathers puffed out against the cold. The waning moon.
A bald-faced hornet lands on a dead cherry limb, chews and fills her mandibles with wood. Somewhere another tree is growing a paper fruit.
Between showers, a shallow, orange V careens through the cherry’s dead limbs. Mating craneflies? No, a large beetle with orange elytra.
What wind is this, disturbing the stifling tranquility of the morning? The cherry tree wags its thick webwormed finger. A sudden downpour.
A hummingbird defending her patch of soapwort buzzes an ovenbird, who walks back and forth on the cherry branches in his big pink feet.
A house wren ascends a stepladder in the steady rain. With a sudden crack, the cherry tree beside the porch sheds a dead branch.