Before the first birds, a thin, gaping moon. A last katydid stopping mid-creak. The whine of tires on the highway over the ridge.
katydids
September 19, 2022
Dawn. The last katydid falls silent. The fourth-quarter moon, curled up like a dried fish, disappears into a cloud.
September 13, 2021
Breezy and overcast at dawn. From up in the woods, the declarative WHO! of a barred owl. The last katydid rattles to a stop.
October 7, 2020
A warm-for-autumn morning. An east wind drives great flocks of yellow leaves out of the woods. One of last night’s katydids starts up again.
October 6, 2017
Down-hollow, the nocturnal katydids are already getting started: time is short. A fly on its back treads the air, trying to right itself.
September 26, 2017
A fork-tailed bush katydid lands on the bottom railing, looks around, then flies off toward the woods on wings half grass blade, half angel.
October 22, 2015
Breezy and warm. A tulip-tree samara helicopters past the porch. In one of the bare birches, a single katydid plays his worn rasp.
October 11, 2015
Bright morning after a cold night. One katydid still stridulates, seemingly in dialogue with a blue-headed vireo—two slow, three-beat calls.
October 26, 2014
A katydid clings to the side of the house at sunrise, its veined leaf of a body immobile in the cold but still as green as July.
July 31, 2012
A katydid that had been perched on my chair leg walks jerkily across the porch and stops in the shadow of a railing, outlandishly green.
July 16, 2012
Picking bergamot leaves, I’m startled by one leaf that leaps to escape: a katydid. It watches me wild-eyed from an adjacent plant.
August 27, 2009
The low cloud ceiling is a tabula rasa for the arabesques of chimney swifts. A high-pitched rasping in the trees–some insomniac katydid.