White sky, bleary sun. Cold air, hot coffee. That equinoctial balance. Crickets trill, chipmunks tick, aspen leaves flip back and forth.
chipmunks
The rain finally stops. In the woods and yard, chipmunks zip back and forth like hyperactive exoparasites on the mountain’s glistening pelt.
Sun shining through fog. The garden-wall chipmunk must be in heat: two suitors battle for her attention in what’s left of the snow.
In the shadows of the treetops, two chipmunks race over and under the three inches of fresh, wet snow. A chickadee sings his spring song.
The same sort of day as yesterday, but so many more bird calls! A chipmunk emerges and goes on an inspection tour of the old stone wall.
Sun through cloud—enough to make the leaf duff shine in the woods. A chipmunk rustles. The distant squeal of a misaligned wheel on a train.
The forest is still a-flicker with falling leaves—astonishing this late in the year. Distant church bells. A chipmunk’s agitated ticking.
The sound of chainsaws from over the ridge. A chipmunk races up the big tulip poplar and returns to earth along the first, hung-down limb.
A tulip-tree leaf under the drip line cups its portion of rain. A chipmunk hidden in the dead grass shrieks when I turn the page of my book.
The builder leaves but hammering continues—a pileated woodpecker. Two chipmunks poke their heads out on either side of a rock in the wall.
Gold on gold: a kinglet’s crest among the birch leaves. Rust on rust: a chipmunk’s fur among rain-flattened tangles of stiltgrass.
Strands of silk left by spider or caterpillar aeronauts shimmer in and out of view. From the woods, a chipmunk’s high-pitched monologue.
The hollow tock-tocking of chipmunks. A milkweed seed floats past: quite a trick, I think, to turn a white beard into a balloon.
Breezy and warm. A chipmunk scrambles through the blossoming barberry bush next to the stream, releasing waves of its sperm-like odor.