Brighter color between the trees: sunrise. Gray as their trunks: a doe and her grown fawns. From down hollow, a screech owl’s trill.
fall foliage
October 15, 2017
Sunlight for the first time in days, flooding through new holes in the forest canopy. The wistful theme song of a white-throated sparrow.
October 13, 2017
Cold and gloomy despite the bright leaves; even the wren sounds querulous. When I look again, the unmoving fly is gone from the wall.
October 12, 2017
Gold on gold: a kinglet’s crest among the birch leaves. Rust on rust: a chipmunk’s fur among rain-flattened tangles of stiltgrass.
October 11, 2017
Just past daybreak it begins to rain and the forest is full of falling leaves—a slow, steady flutter of summer yellow into the drab shadows.
October 8, 2017
The goldenrod is all brown, but each breeze sprinkles it with yellow from the woods. The last hornet returns to her ghost town of a nest.
September 30, 2017
Cloudy and cold. Gusts of wind try on bespoke garments of yellow leaves. The hornets are still flying, tough as the nails in their abdomens.
November 17, 2016
The neighbor’s leaf blower, that insect whine. I worry about the oaks that still have leaves—snow is coming, the kind that breaks limbs.
November 12, 2016
Hoarfrost costumes the yard, sparkling in the sun for a few minutes of glory. Oaks that looked brown under clouds glow orange and red again.
November 10, 2016
The stream’s dark thread. A jay pierces it with his bill three times. The scarlet oak I planted so long ago is flying all its red flags.
November 9, 2016
Rain past, the sky brightens. Great crowds of oak leaves are taking the plunge. A freight train whistles an almost perfect minor chord.
November 4, 2016
The red and scarlet oaks have finally turned their namesake colors, and the whole ridge shines like a fresh gut pile in the sun.
November 1, 2016
A squirrel on an oak limb freezes in alarm at the figure passing underneath, that blaze-orange cap a color no longer found in the trees.
October 31, 2016
Cold and mostly clear. A pileated woodpecker riot of one vents its fury in a glowing, golden canopy of chestnut oaks.