Heavily gray skies at mid-morning. A tree cricket trills in the garden—a bright drone note. The wind goes past, releasing a small crowd of yellow leaves.
crickets
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
An autumnal sunrise heralded by crickets. I search the bracken patch for any two fronds in the same shade of green, yellow, or brown.
A dawn chorus of tree crickets, field crickets and mole crickets. After a half-clear sunrise, the clouds move in.
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.
Light rain at sunrise, drumming on the porch roof—not enough to still the crickets or keep the hummingbird from her appointed rounds.
Nearly silent at sunrise, except for the field crickets playing their only hit: so much autumn and melancholy in that raspy metronome.
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.
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.
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.