The rain peters out not long after sunrise. Fog retreats up the hill. A ladybird beetle wanders the folds of my barn coat.
fog
Thick fog. A screech owl trills, seemingly in answer to the wren. Then crows join the chat. The owl’s trilling pauses, then resumes a quarter mile away.
Freezing fog that lifts after sunrise into a gray woolen sky, leaving frosted branches for the squirrels—gray or red, cautious or pell-mell.
Thick fog. When the wren stops singing, there’s dead silence for several minutes until a nuthatch calls. From father away, the death-cry of a rabbit.
Mist dissipating into blue. The walnut trees on the north side of the house are now nearly bare, even as the one on the south side is still more green than yellow. The sun briefly blazes through a new hole in the hillside canopy.
A knife-thin moon fades into the dawn sky. The only cloud huddles in the bottom corner of the meadow, where a phoebe is calling.
Inside a white whale of fog, the trees drip and drop yellow leaves, and the sun is felt more than seen, with a faint wash of blue beyond.
Fog rising into blue. Everything drips. A hummingbird sits on a small branch in a small walnut tree, head swiveling all about.
A crescent moon above the ridge at dawn is lost in fog by sunrise. A hummingbird bothers the bergamot, and a wood thrush is singing as lustily as if it were still June.
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.
Fog lingering into mid-morning. The sprawling lilac at the far edge of the yard is now more than half-brown with leaf-spot disease, brought on by this endless rainy season. The mullein stalk still follows its yellow flowers into the sky.
Out before sunrise, where the humidity has become visible: a thin fog through which I swim, leaving the porch for an early-morning hike to beat the heat.
Rain tapering off by eight. Even the fog looks green. Wild garlic plants in the yard are beginning to straighten, heads going up like herons trying to swallow large fish.
Thin fog, or just very thick humidity? But it’s still cool enough to enjoy the slanting sunbeams, the tired-sounding cicadas, the catbird’s jazz.