In the flat light of a cloudy morning, bracken fronds glow like the sun-bleached rib cages of seraphim—skeletons gone rococo.
clouds
7/7/2022
Clear sky, sun in the treetops… “Cloudy conditions will continue all day,” my phone admonishes. The big tulip tree releases a yellow leaf.
7/6/2022
Some unscheduled sunshine from a fissure in the clouds, while the breeze whispers of distant storms. I scratch a new itch to redness.
7/3/2022
Overcast at sunrise. The woodpeckers’ percussive breakfasts. A mosquito wanders over my propped-up feet.
7/1/2022
I watch a new squirrel figure out the tree-to-tree route out of the woods, backtracking, sizing things up. The sun goes in.
6/26/2022
The sun behind a nearly motionless cloud casts a pair of crepuscular rays like vast, dark wings. A hen turkey stalks into the woods.
6/20/2022
A deer grazes a few feet away; I can hear blades of grass tearing. The sun almost breaks through a thin spot in the clouds.
6/18/2022
Windy and cool. The pale undersides of leaves turning in unison like shoals of fish. A robin and a tanager trading off.
6/12/2022
When the clouds move off, an orbweaver’s web appears in the corner of a porch balustrade, shimmering as it pulses in the breeze.
6/9/2022
Just past sunrise, a clearing wind. I look up from the Eastern Europe of my book to flame-bellied clouds, the forest all astir.
5/29/2022
A planetary conjunction slowly infiltrated by cirrus stained the color of dawn. A barred owl calls and a wild turkey answers.
5/24/2022
Heavily overcast and cool. The black cherry trees at the woods’ edge point the fingers of their inflorescences in every direction but down.
4/29/2022
Sun through a thin milk of clouds. A lull in birdsong, punctuated by a didactic ovenbird and the rose-breasted grosbeak’s brilliant warble.
4/27/2022
Cloudy and cold. One of the local redtails is hunting along the woods’ edge, flying from branch to branch, head swiveling all about.