A white sky with a bright gash of sun. The red-eyed vireo falls silent, leaving only two crickets, one who chirps and one who trills. Then, inevitably, the wren.
clouds
Overcast and still. A yellow walnut leaflet flutters down onto the fallen trunk of my favorite climbing tree when I was a kid.
Cool and still with thin clouds. On the road-bank, a gray squirrel noses about in the leaves, as if searching its memory.
Sun on leaves fading from shine to sheen. Sound is still out of the east: the slowly expanding crater swallowing farms and forests. It rumbles. It shakes.
Cool with murky, cloud-mediated sunlight. A hummingbird perches on a walnut branch for thirty seconds, head swiveling all about.
Humid and still, with clouds trailing low into the treetops—a typical morning in the tropics. The scolding and begging sounds of birds with fledglings.
Heavily overcast; 88% humidity. I’m clapping out the lives of mosquitoes, one after another—too big and slow for their own good. A breeze springs up.
Overcast. Sunrise is when the crows wake up. A large brown moth tucks itself into the eaves.
Cool and quiet, with the sun half-dimmed by thin clouds. A series of loud wingbeats from the forest. A gurgle from my gut.
Overcast at sunrise. The jumping spider who lives under my chair comes topside for a brief scuttle about. A red-bellied woodpecker bangs on his morning drum.
Low clouds trailing drizzle settle into the trees, where a wood thrush and a wood pewee are calling. From the wet meadow, an indigo bunting’s bone-dry song.
Heavily overcast and humid. A hen turkey’s anxious call. The springhouse catbird slipping out of her stream of consciousness to mew.
Sunlight through the trees slowly growing sharper as high clouds thin out. A shadow-play of two silent crows. A falling petal.
Cool and nearly clear, save for a wash of high-altitude murk. The tall tulip tree at the woods’ edge is shedding petals, leaves waving like ravers in the slightest breeze.