gray squirrel – Page 30 – The Morning Porch

February 1, 2009

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.

Dave Bonta January 9, 2009

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.

Dave Bonta January 2, 2009

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

Dave Bonta December 30, 2008

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.

Dave Bonta December 19, 2008

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.

Dave Bonta December 9, 2008

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.

Dave Bonta December 6, 2008

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.

Dave Bonta December 5, 2008

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

Dave Bonta November 18, 2008

A three-point buck emerges from the woods, hooves crunching through the icy seep, the sky pink behind him and ahead, the blood-red hill.

Dave Bonta November 7, 2008

As the canopy thins, clots of leafy nests are beginning to appear: the nuclei of neurons. Squirrels race between them, quick as thought.

Dave Bonta November 2, 2008

Two squirrels meet nose-to-nose on a maple trunk and grapple gently, gray against the gray bark. They freeze for a second and almost vanish.

Dave Bonta October 31, 2008

6:20 a.m. All through the newly bare branches of the black walnut tree beside the driveway, the stars glitter, too high for any squirrel.