Something in the lilac attracts half-hearted alarms from a chickadee, two titmice and a wren. The lilac leaves hang limp in the humid air.
lilac
A chipping sparrow emerges from the lilac, pursued by the high-pitched cries of nestlings. It lands and wipes its bill on a dead branch.
It’s not too hot to fight: a robin drives a chipmunk from the lilac. A minute later, a flicker drives a downy woodpecker off its den tree.
I can’t stop looking at the vivid green lilac, translucent in the mid-morning sun. In the woods beyond, the laurel is a blaze of gloss.
Rain has erased the last patches of snow. The lilac bush gives birth to a cardinal, a wren, four white-crowned sparrows and a chipmunk.
The wistful two notes of the chickadee’s spring song. The gray clouds begin to turn pink. A rabbit dashes into the lilac when I stand up.
A pair of Carolina wrens—one in the lilac, the other in the dead cherry—flit from branch to branch, tasting the new-fallen snow.
With the leaves down I can see not only farther, but deeper: through a maze of lilac branches, I spot a rabbit when its dark eye blinks.
Another warm morning. A Carolina wren pops out of the bridal wreath bush like a rabbit from a magician’s hat and ascends the lilac, singing.
In the cold drizzle, a kinglet hovers over the faded lilac leaves, hawking prey too small to see. Then it, too, vanishes into the gloom.
Humid, yet still so dry that the lilac leaves hang limply. In my last dream before waking, I couldn’t find the exit from an endless mall.
Gone for just two days, I come home to find half the lilac crushed by a fallen limb from the dead elm. A phoebe already uses it as a perch.
Random lilac, red maple and black cherry leaves have flipped over, exposing their pale undersides—evidence of a downpour in the wee hours.
The French lilac, backlit by the sun, shimmers like a bright green sail against the still-open woods. A field sparrow’s rising trill.
*
This will be the last new update until May 17th; I’m off to the U.K. to give a poetry reading and visit friends.