The sound of steady rain unmediated by leaves. Civilization is reduced to a distant rumble. Tree trunks break out in patches of lichen.
lichen
It’s pouring. Lichens glow on rain-dark trees, pale blue and green rashes. Through a thickening carpet of fallen leaves, the bright moss.
Lichens are aglow after a night of rain, the tulip tree’s trunk painted the same pale green as its leaves. New warbler songs off in the fog.
A steady shimmer of rain. Wet tree trunks glow gray-green with lichen, and the lilac looks festive with its orange strings of dead bindweed.
There’s a shimmer in the air: rain fine as the hair on a woman’s back. The wet tree trunks are scrofulous with lichen.
Lichens glow green and gray on rain-darkened bark. Only a few, small patches of snow still dot the hillside, like a lingering pox.
Pale patches on the upper sides of branches, almost like snow: lichens opening their pores to the rain and fog. My left eyelid twitches.
Warm, overcast and damp. The last bit of bark on the dead elm tree glows pale green on the outer half of a limb, a four-fingered glove.
A true November day, cold and gray and wet. Patches of pale lichen on tree trunks glow like dim headlights in the fog. A distant chickadee.
A chipmunk’s steady drip. How many years have I been sitting here? I remember each stage in the lichen’s conquest of the springhouse roof.
In the dim light of a misty morning, rain-slick surfaces glow: green lichens, purple raspberry canes, the yellow blades of foxtail millet.