Within the white ring of she-loves-me, she-loves-me-not, the Fibonacci spirals of yellow florets—a fly’s unlikely carpet.
flies
Thursday June 27, 2019
The continental heat has reached us at last. Goldfinches chatter happily. Flies walk slowly back and forth as if surveying their new domain.
Wednesday June 12, 2019
My wife observes that it’s a morning for wrens and not for sparrows. A new pile of dogshit has acquired an entourage of green bottle flies.
Wednesday August 15, 2018
Overcast. I apologize to the flies still gathering where the dog poo had lain, missing their breakfast. A wood pigeon watches from the roof.
Friday June 22, 2018
The dog and her entourage of flies. In the deep shade beside the wall, one clump of myrtle leaves is pure white, like a school of cave fish.
Friday June 15, 2018
The fallen mock orange petals attract flies, as if they were the corpses of amorphous cherubs. A blue tit fledgling’s squeaky demands.
Sunday June 10, 2018
Flies buzz in every patch of sun. A morose-looking European robin sits in the shade above the feeders, flicking his tail.
Saturday 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.
Thursday February 01, 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.
Friday 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.