gray squirrel – Page 28 – The Morning Porch

May 20, 2009

Dave Bonta May 20, 2009

A new birdsong at sunrise: “Pleased pleased pleased to MEETcha!” Likewise, I mutter, trying to place the name. Ah—chestnut-sided warbler.

Dave Bonta May 11, 2009 1

Squabbling squirrels just in from the edge of the woods are almost invisible among the new leaves, except for a gray tail’s flicker.

Dave Bonta April 27, 2009

An inversion layer brings traffic noise into the dawn chorus. Large gnats land on my arm. A squirrel sits on the head of the concrete dog.

Dave Bonta April 10, 2009

Twenty minutes after the feral cat disappeared under the porch, the squirrel still scolds. Rain is a soft patter of lead shot—or so I wish.

Dave Bonta March 28, 2009

Dark morning. The fox squirrel’s tail flickers orange from the back of the big red maple whose buds have swollen into dime-sized stoplights.

Dave Bonta March 26, 2009

First rainy morning in weeks, but how quickly things turn to rust: rasp of a starling, a red-winged blackbird’s call, a scolding squirrel.

Dave Bonta March 13, 2009

Clear and cold at sunrise. The feral cat slinks across the springhouse meadow. Muffled sounds of a squirrel scolding from inside its drey.

Dave Bonta March 7, 2009

A warm morning—53°F. A Cooper’s hawk calls, a screech owl trills, but the squirrels go on rummaging through the leaf litter. I spy a gnat.

Dave Bonta February 25, 2009

With the sun on my face I turn my eyes into camera lenses, open, shut: half-second negatives of trees, bushes, railing. Remember this.

Dave Bonta February 12, 2009

Rain-dark trunks gyrate in the high winds. Branches rattle and clash. The trees are like sleepwalkers; I watch with my heart in my throat.

Dave Bonta February 10, 2009

I watch a porcupine waddling toward the porch in my camcorder’s small screen, how the spines move as its fat flesh jiggles. Rain on the way.

Dave Bonta February 1, 2009

Clear at sunrise. The squeaks of courting squirrels are almost indistinguishable from the squeaks of the trees, rocking in the warm wind.

Dave Bonta January 31, 2009

I can hear my mother yelling at the squirrels: Go! Go! Go! It occurs to me that snow is the opposite of water, slippery when dry.

Dave Bonta January 21, 2009

A gray squirrel sits motionless for several minutes on the topmost crook of a fallen limb. Then like a diver it plunges into the snow.