I feel like a salamander, slick with moisture from hiking in 98% humidity. The first flies are beginning to buzz about, anticipating the sun burning through the fog.
flies
June 13, 2025
Breezy and cool, with the sun guttering in cirrus. Over the course of an hour, I swat an astonishing diversity of small flies and gnats. It’s good to feel wanted, I suppose.
May 5, 2025
Some prolonged glimpses of the sun. Gnats circle my head despite the gnatcatcher calling non-stop from the edge of the yard.
August 4, 2022
Cool beginning to another scorcher. A fly goes for a walk down a porch column. The thud of a walnut on the road.
August 29, 2021
Almost fall. The motherless fawn running out of the woods has lost its spots but not its cloud of flies.
June 26, 2021
Feet propped up, my trouser legs become new territory for flies. A vulture glides over the forest, its shadow racing up and down the trees.
April 19, 2020
Bright and warm. A squirrel in the lilac drops to the ground for a quick roll, as if scratching an itch. A fat fly moves into the shade.
March 7, 2020
Cloudless and cool. I wonder idly about the target shooter a couple of miles away, their preferred pronouns. A fly walks the rim of my mug.
December 30, 2019
A pause in the rain. Under a dripping cedar limb, two filmy-winged winter insects dance side by side, pogoing like airborne punks.
April 28, 2018
Sun warms the porch; a rising buzz of flies. Each spicebush around the farm is yellowing up on its own schedule, bud to fuzz to frowze.
February 1, 2018
A few degrees above freezing; the ground’s thin coat of snow already looks mangy. I spot a tiny fly walking purposefully across the porch.
November 24, 2017
Despite the temperature—two degrees above freezing—a half dozen small insects dance above a branch at the woods’ edge, back-lit by the sun.
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 6, 2017
Down-hollow, the nocturnal katydids are already getting started: time is short. A fly on its back treads the air, trying to right itself.