Crystal-clear and cool at mid-morning, the Sunday silence only broken by a chipmunk’s metronome and the distant rumble of a train. In a patch of sun, a cricket picks up where he left off.
crickets
August 29, 2025
Cloudy and damp at sunrise. Traffic is a distant rumble; one tree cricket trills. When I next look up from my book, the sky is nearly clear.
August 26, 2025
Too cold for all but one hardy field cricket. In the meadow, the half-grown twin fawns have a go at their mother’s milk, one on each side. A small flock of geese go over, bugling.
August 23, 2025
The slow creak of a field cricket like a rusty winch for the sunrise. In the dying lilac I spot new mile-a-minute vines.
August 19, 2025
Heavily overcast and quiet, except for the steady trill of tree crickets and a distant vireo. A catbird rustles in the silky dogwood, gorging on the deep-blue drupes.
August 17, 2025
An autumnal sunrise heralded by crickets. I search the bracken patch for any two fronds in the same shade of green, yellow, or brown.
August 13, 2025
A dawn chorus of tree crickets, field crickets and mole crickets. After a half-clear sunrise, the clouds move in.
September 16, 2024
Sun in the top of the tall tulip poplar—yellow crowning yellow. The last nighttime cricket falls silent. Off through the thinning woods, new chinks of sky.
August 19, 2024
Light rain at sunrise, drumming on the porch roof—not enough to still the crickets or keep the hummingbird from her appointed rounds.
August 6, 2024
Nearly silent at sunrise, except for the field crickets playing their only hit: so much autumn and melancholy in that raspy metronome.
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 23, 2024
Tree crickets rather than birdsong: it feels like late summer already. But after yesterday’s soaking rain, leaves no longer droop. I can smell the earth.
August 31, 2023
The full moon sits on the horizon, serenaded by cold crickets. Overhead, the Pleiades wink out one by one, leaving Jupiter alone in the crown of a locust.
October 25, 2022
Overcast with fog that thins out for the purported sunrise. It’s warm enough that one tree cricket trills in the herb garden.