Each dawn this time of year brings revelation: the sky behind the ridgetop trees emerging piecemeal like a puzzle. And between the sun and the clouds there’s a new, transitional state: a crowd of yellow.
fall foliage
Partly cloudy and almost warm. The jays are having heated conferences overhead, with strangled cries and jeers. A few more leaves catch rides on a passing breeze.
Clear and still cold at mid-morning. Sunlight flashes through thinning leaves shuffled by the wind, the sun’s own color more a yell than a yellow.
Clear and cold, with more sky showing through the ridgetop trees. A raucous assembly of crows gives way to ravens—their resonant croaks.
Under a gray sky, small birds move silently through green and gold leaves, while the wren yammers away behind the shed.
Clear and still, except for the periodic crashing down of a walnut, each one followed by a small entourage of yellow leaves. The sun clears the ridge and the trees reclaim their shadows.
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.
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.
Distant shots from a semi-automatic: poppoppoppoppoppop. The flutter of a falling leaf. A squirrel’s footsteps on the roof.
Cool and still with murky sunlight and yellow leaves dropping one by one. From the north and east, the guttural hum of industry—that drone note.
Cool and quiet at sunrise. A hummingbird circles the space where a nectar feeder hung years ago. A black cherry tree at the woods’ edge is turning orange.
Cool and clear at sunrise. A yellow walnut leaf rests on the end table instead of a book. The slow motor of a bumblebee.
Deep cold. The sound of wind mingling with the dull howl of distant jets. Two dead leaves pick this moment to finally let go and twirl up through their small oak into the clouds.
Blue-gray layered with yellow-orange a half hour past sunrise. The creek is still singing about Tuesday’s rain, and the one oak at the woods’ edge that always holds onto its dead leaves hisses in the wind.