A molting robin with almost no tail zips across the yard and disappears into the elder tree. The sky’s blue skin scored with contrails.
contrails
Saturday September 23, 2017
Blue sky; the scars from early-morning jets heal quickly. A male Carolina wren’s fulsome singing elicits as usual the female’s terse zzzzip!
Sunday May 24, 2015
The white porch railing is a landing-strip for butterflies: red-spotted purple, little wood satyr. A fat contrail lingers above the ridge.
Tuesday January 13, 2015
The snowpack glitters in the sun. The soft chirps of foraging sparrows. A single jet trailing a short contrail in an otherwise empty sky.
Monday December 29, 2014
The slow, silent drift of a contrail. Juncos silhouetted by the sun have silver linings, a fact of which they must surely be oblivious.
Monday November 10, 2014
Bands of cirrus that might’ve been contrails two hours ago are crossed by a helicopter, ponderous and loud, like an enormous scarab.
Thursday November 14, 2013
Thirty thousand feet overhead, a south-bound jet turns to the southwest. Its boomerang-shaped contrail drifts slowly over the ridge.
Monday November 11, 2013
Sunrise. I watch the slow drift of contrail graffiti: I, I, I at cross angles, until they merge and disappear into spreading clouds.
Saturday February 02, 2013
Cold and bleak. The clouds part above the ridge: a circle of blue bisected by a wide, shining contrail, the jet roaring just out of sight.
Thursday December 06, 2012
Parallel bands—old contrails—score the northeast sky. In the front garden, I spot a mantis egg case sparkling high in the witch hazel.