Fog that lasts for hours, blurring the lines between night and day, and between sky and ground for night-flying migrants now foraging all along the woods’ edge—a cloud full of food.
clouds
September 21, 2024
Jays, then crows, then jays again: my kind of singers, harsh as life itself or hoarse with joy. The sun glimmers through high, thin clouds.
September 17, 2024
A white sky only now that the banks of white snakeroot are beginning to fade. In between: green and gold. The drought-struck lilac dying back.
September 9, 2024
A cold and cloudy dawn. The thump and clatter of hooves, deer crashing through the underbrush—hounded not by a predator but the first stirrings of rut. A migrant thrush’s soft call.
September 4, 2024
Another cold morning. The sun through thin cirrus casts a wan light over the clouds of blossoming snakeroot.
August 31, 2024
Overcast and damp. The roofs drip; leaves glisten. The sound of fast squirrel claws on bark. An animal under the house lets out a snarl.
August 30, 2024
Heavily overcast and still. Two whippoorwills call off to the east. Sunrise is imperceptible aside from a short blast of Carolina wren song.
August 15, 2024
Cool and still, with sunlight at half strength due to atmospheric haze—smoke from Canada’s burning forests. A wood pewee’s bluesy melisma.
August 4, 2024
Partly cloudy and cool at sunrise, with 97% humidity and very little noise from—I’m guessing—valleys full of fog. A single-engine plane fades into the distance.
July 31, 2024
Rain drips from the roof and from the trees. Clouds are thinning out. The topmost leaves of the tall tulip poplar are waving.
July 30, 2024
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.
July 24, 2024
Overcast and still. A yellow walnut leaflet flutters down onto the fallen trunk of my favorite climbing tree when I was a kid.
July 22, 2024
Cool and still with thin clouds. On the road-bank, a gray squirrel noses about in the leaves, as if searching its memory.
July 20, 2024
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.