Mist turns into drizzle. A small, filmy-winged fly drifts back and forth across the yard, heedless as a texting teen. A goldfinch monologue.
flies
I wish I had names for all the filmy-winged insects that appear like spirits when the light is strong and the shadows behind them are deep.
Cool and breezy. A fly with a blue abdomen and golden thorax, first spotted yesterday, returns for further exploration of my partner’s knee.
Cool and clear. An enormous hairy fly lands on my arm, then my chair. I swat it and it flies off, apparently unhurt. Clouds move in.
Sun in the treetops and a raven’s hollow, metallic croak. A fly buzzes through the porch without slowing down.
A hummingbird buzzes below the porch, looking for the touch-me-nots that the deer have eaten. Fly on my shoe, is it everything you’d hoped?
Catbird caterwauling by the cattails. Bumblebee buzzing in the bergamot. A gray fly walks the gray band of my sandal. The sun comes out.
A filmy-winged fly back-lit by the sun yo-yos up and down in the middle of the yard, despite the stiff breeze. Overhead, a vulture circling.
The temperature rises and with it the insects: those that buzz, those that drift on filmy wings. Behind the trees, the blue ache of sky.
Cloudy and cold. A bluebottle fly clings to a porch column, stopped head pointing at five o’clock. Four geese go over—a confusion of honks.
The sun makes a brief appearance; a breeze picks up. The bluebottle fly moves to the lee side of the railing and rubs its forefeet together.
A warm morning. The yard is filled with the bright wings of insects drifting up and down, back and forth against the dark woods.
It’s cloudy, but the forest understorey glows with autumn color. A phoebe hawks flies from the spicebush, gurgling with satisfaction.
A bold squirrel crosses the porch, going right under my chair. Below the top railing, an upside-down fly spins madly in a net of silk.