A high cloud ceiling full of holes. In the meadow, one snakeroot flower nods: hummingbird.
clouds
Harvest moon setting behind the western ridge, followed by a faint moon dog in the wash of cirrus.
A break in the showers: it’s overcast but bright. A slug glides slowly up the porch railing with its 27,000 teeth.
As above, so below: white sky, white snakeroot. A hummingbird buzzes in to bother the jewelweed below the porch.
Cool and clear except for wisps of shredded contrails. Sound is out of the east: rumble of a train, the quarry’s grind.
Out before sunrise to watch a thunderstorm that never appears. The clouds half-clear. Squirrels go about their business.
At 8:15 the sun almost comes out. Half an hour later, it’s still almost out. My faint shadow gives up after the feet.
Clouds gravid with rain at sunrise. A wood thrush calls quietly. In the top of the tallest oak, a squirrel’s silhouette begins its descent.
Sun through a scrim of cloud. The first white snakeroot is in bloom. A Linne’s cicada rattles like a bad engine.
The third autumnal morning in a row, with clouds introducing a more melancholy note: nesting time is over, the sky road calls…
Milk-white sky and the white noise of tree crickets. A pileated woodpecker cackles to herself at the top of a tall locust.
Overcast at sunrise. A meadowhawk dragonfly zips back and forth, inches above the rain-soaked vegetation.
Lightly overcast and cool. A molting warbler skulks in the old lilac, foraging for breakfast on the undersides of leaves.
Cool, overcast, and humid. A breeze brings the smell of ozone and a hush of rain finishing its journey down from the trees.