gray squirrel – Page 30 – The Morning Porch

April 15, 2013March 7, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

February 25, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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

February 12, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

February 10, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

February 1, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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

January 31, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

January 21, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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.

January 9, 2009 by Dave Bonta

At first light, a rare glimpse of a rabbit below the porch. I can hear the ice shattering as it chews on a clump of dead brome grass.

January 2, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Leaden sky. The loud whisper of a jet. Squirrels scuttle through the white fur on the leaf litter, searching for memories of buried nuts.

December 30, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Clear and cold at sunrise, with gusts of wind and a roaring up on the ridge. Chickadees like yard-sale shoppers darting from find to find.

December 19, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Sleet to rain to sleet to rain: the tapping on the roof above my head keeps changing pitch. Faint notes of chickadees, titmice, a nuthatch.

December 9, 2008 by Dave Bonta

How the acoustics vary from one morning to the next! Yesterday, the hollow was a soundproofed room; today it’s as echoey as a concert hall.

December 6, 2008 by Dave Bonta

It’s cold—the porch floorboards pop when I come out—and still as a tomb. The distant calls of a female great-horned owl go unanswered.

December 5, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Juncos gather on the gravel driveway, replenishing their gizzards with grit. Up and down the big maple, it’s squirrel kabuki, love and war.