It’s cloudy, but the forest understorey glows with autumn color. A phoebe hawks flies from the spicebush, gurgling with satisfaction.
flies
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.
Wind shuffles the suddenly yellow leaves of elm and birch—their marked decks. A fly wanders the inside of a window pane on sticky feet.
It’s warm. Filmy-winged flies drift past the porch. A flock of geese arrows low over the house—the wft wft wft of their great wings.
Sunny but still cold at 9:00. A fly walks slowly up a porch column. Water gurgles in the ditch. Three kinds of sparrows trade songs.
When I come out, a committee of flies is convening on my chair, despite the chill. Ten minutes pass without a single bird call, then phoebe.
Cool but humid. A vireo sings quietly, as if talking to himself. One of those quick, small flies cleans its wings with its hind-most legs.
Small flies cavort on the porch floor despite the morning chill, sure of the heat to come. The red-eyed vireo is beginning to sound weary.
Three small flies gather on the top railing, wandering back and forth on the straight white road like lost commuters. Today will be hot.
A halictid bee pivots in the black…
A halictid bee pivots in the black-eyed susan, a metallic green mote. At the end of one petal, a deerfly dries those anti-petals, its wings.
A doe strains to lick the flies…
A doe strains to lick the flies from the part of her back her tail can’t sweep, black riders unshaken by the endless tremors in her fur.
On the steep slope below my parents…
On the steep slope below my parents’ house, a doe sweeps the deerflies from her twin fawns’ spotted backs with her long, rough tongue.
I prop my feet up on the rail,…
I prop my feet up on the rail, and within seconds, a blowfly lands on the toe of my left sandal and a syrphid fly on my right. It’s summer.