Even the invaders’ spring is late: barberry, lilac, multiflora rose just now leafing out, the hated myrtle purpling what used to be a lawn.
lilac
Hard rain falling into slush, and the fog thickening: cloud into cloud. Buds glow yellow on the lilac where two titmice flit.
Juncos fill the lilac, nearest cover to an unfrozen section of stream. Five or six at a time they flutter down to drink from the dark water.
The wind has scoured the branches clean, but the old concrete dog standing at point in the shelter of the lilac still wears a coat of snow.
A few flakes in the air. A gray squirrel wanders through the lilac branches, scattering a pair of juncos. The squeaky calls of finches.
Somewhere above the clouds, a military jet heads north: a gray sound on a gray day. In the newly bare lilac, yellow wires of bindweed.
Two squirrels from the gray woods drop into the lilac and leap from branch to branch, disappearing for long moments into its freakish green.
Mid-morning: the first patch of blue, little larger than a moon. In the old lilac below the other house, a Carolina wren bursts into song.
Windy and cool. One branch of the lilac shivers as a Carolina wren conducts a thorough investigation, ticking loudly after each new find.
A tiger swallowtail is laying eggs on the lilac and black cherry, dabbing each leaf with the tip of her abdomen, wings fighting the breeze.
A phoebe’s spiraling dive ends with an audible snap of its bill. A catbird improvises from the lilac, switching branches after each line.
Solstice sun in the treetops. The lilac quivers as two titmice move through, grooming it for insects. A fawn dances out into the meadow.
The French lilac whitening into blossom, its once-smooth profile smashed by last October’s snowstorm, finally looks wild against the woods.
After last night’s rain, everything glistens but the four gray forms of deer beneath the lilac, their thin clouds of breath.