Gray sky ten minutes after a flaming sunrise. A phoebe calls for old times’ sake. Quarry trucks rumble through the gap.
clouds
9/13/2023
Cool and quiet, once all the newly arrived night travelers have stopped chirping. Patches of blue sky appear. A goldfinch twitters half-heartedly.
8/28/2023
Gray rain clouds thickening towards 8:00. It’s very still; long moments go by without a single bird call. A beetle finds its way to the butterfly weed.
8/23/2023
Cold at dawn, with the lightest of breezes bringing sounds from the east—mostly the limestone quarry’s dull roar. A screech owl trills. The clouds go pink.
8/21/2023
Sun glimmering in a sky so light blue as to appear white. The Carolina wren’s motor sounds as if it’s running out of gas. Mosquitoes begin to circle.
8/17/2023
Sunrise filling every cloud’s belly with pink as the Carolina wren trills over and over—once for each cloud, it seems.
8/8/2023
Drizzle in the wind even as the sky brightens. Small patches of blue appear and disappear. A yellow leaf spirals down into the yard.
8/5/2023
Cloudy, but the clouds are paper-thin, so the Carolina wren bobbing on a branch casts a thin shadow.
7/29/2023
White sky with distant crows. The stiltgrass in the meadow is still lying low after a thunderstorm yesterday at dusk.
7/16/2023
Heavily overcast and still, as if it’s going to rain at any moment. The usual birds saying the usual things. The deep-summer hegemony of green.
6/21/2023
The sun rising through high-altitude murk isn’t much brighter than the goldfinches chattering in the treetops, less than three hours till the solstice.
6/17/2023
Sun through thin clouds. A silent crow skims the treetops where a cuckoo coos. Someone’s offsprings beg for more breakfast.
6/6/2023
A bleary, bloodshot sun in an ash-white sky. Pileated woodpeckers foraging just inside the woods’ edge cackle like sacred clowns.
6/5/2023
Cool with thin clouds. Two wood thrushes fly into the woods, dead grass trailing from the leader’s beak. A chipmunk runs under my chair.