A female hummingbird leaves the beebalm to check out the red lettering on my t-shirt, a sleek green torpedo hovering inches from my chest.
ruby-throated hummingbird
August 19, 2016
Crystal-clear sky. A piece of thistledown floats past like an airborne jellyfish. A hummingbird visits the last, purple scraps of bergamot.
August 16, 2016
Two cabbage whites engage in a dogfight, or possibly a pas de deux. A leaf detaches itself from a lilac branch and turns into a hummingbird.
August 13, 2016
Warm and humid. The air is redolent with rot and mold. A hummingbird zooms past, almost too fast for the eye to register. My stomach growls.
July 26, 2016
A hummingbird buzzes below the porch, looking for the touch-me-nots that the deer have eaten. Fly on my shoe, is it everything you’d hoped?
July 10, 2016
Overcast and cool. A buzzing below the porch: when I lean over the rail to look, a hummingbird rises from the jewelweed to meet my gaze.
June 30, 2016
A catbird darts into the weeds. I stand up to look: it’s gobbling down the first ripe raspberries. The buzz of a hummingbird at the beebalm.
June 15, 2016
Noise from the quarry—a grinding drone that runs under everything: oriole song, woodpecker drumming, a hummingbird’s Geiger-counter clicks.
May 30, 2016
At the woods’ edge, three yellow hats: iris gone feral. A hummingbird rockets back and forth through the lilac, showing off for a female.
May 18, 2016
A rabbit in the rain eats grass the way I eat ramen, one long strip disappearing into its mouth, drops flying. A hummingbird buzzes my face.
August 19, 2015
A flat white sky. The ambiguous gestures of random leaves, waving or perhaps drowning in the thick air. A hummingbird is here and gone.
August 14, 2015
Another perfect morning. A hummingbird lifts off from the bergamot, tailed closely by a moth. The quiet, anxious calls of a titmouse.
August 1, 2015
Below the porch, I notice a single orange jewelweed overlooked by the deer. The hummingbird zips right past it on her way to the garden.
July 17, 2015
Cool and quiet. A female hummingbird ignores the bergamot to drink from the soapwort, their plain, pale faces glowing in the weak sunshine.