Another flat-white sunrise, today with the death scream of a rabbit. Crows, woodpeckers. The Carolina wren with his list of demands.
cottontail
October 2, 2023
Sitting by the front door to enjoy the moon, I’m startled by a rabbit running between my feet in her eagerness to graze. Five minutes later she runs back to evade a weasel loping down the road. Orion emerges from the trees.
May 23, 2023
Humid but blessedly cool; the air’s alive with birdsong and slow-moving insects. Rabbits chase and graze among half-grown bracken.
May 6, 2023
Ground fog turns the field white at sunrise. A rabbit feeding at the edge of the driveway feels me watching and looks up, eyes unreadable as quicksand.
April 23, 2023
Cool and damp at sunrise. A small cottontail grazes at the woods’ edge: a salad of tiny leaves. A gnatcatcher’s soft soliloquy.
September 26, 2022
In the half-dark of dawn, something runs across the porch toward my feet—I scream and jump. The rabbit too appears to be discombobulated.
July 4, 2022
Cold and clear. The maternal clucks of a hen turkey. A nearly adult rabbit hops onto the porch and regards me with alarm.
October 20, 2021
Sunrise inches forward, chirp by chirp: towhee, white-throated sparrow. A rabbit gazes at me from the end of the porch with eyes dark as cisterns.
August 16, 2021
Cloudy with 100% chance of migrating warblers: the yard is briefly possessed. I hear a noise, turn my head and meet a rabbit’s critical gaze.
May 17, 2021
Up early enough for the last of the dawn fog and the wood pewee’s dreamy chant. Two rabbits graze side-by-side in the road.
April 17, 2021
Overcast and cold. A rabbit is gathering dead grass to line a nest at the end of the herb garden, a few feet from the plastic flamingo.
January 26, 2019
From under the house, rabbit tracks encircling a half-eaten raspberry cane, raccoon tracks going straight to the stream—muddy on the return.
February 9, 2018
Steady, fine snow—the kind that means business. A rabbit dashes across the springhouse yard and disappears into the crown of a fallen tree.
January 18, 2018
A tangle of tracks in the yard: rabbit, cat, squirrel, mouse… I’m not picturing a children’s book, but each creature fearful and alone.