A low cloud ceiling gravid with rain. It’s quiet. Every few seconds, another yellow leaf zigzags down.
rain
Thunderstorm at dawn; I rush through my shower so I can watch the rain. With each lightning flash, raindrops falling from the eaves become momentary suns.
The first full day of astronomical autumn dawns to downpour. A cricket in the garden scrapes out a last few, scattered notes.
Sunrise somewhere over the rain. In the dripping forest canopy, a dark card-shuffle of wings.
Rain easing off by mid-morning. At one end of the lilac, I spot some dark leaves: buckthorn, I think, grown 10 feet tall without my noticing.
Rain thickens toward mid-morning as the ex-hurricane moves through. One cricket still calls from the shelter of peony leaves.
Rain and warblers. An earth-shaking blast from the quarry two miles away. The soft susurrus of tree crickets.
Tulip poplar leaves waving like four-fingered, cartoon hands. A shimmer of mizzle thickens into rain. The Carolina wrens go on dueting.
A few drops of rain. A gnatcatcher fluttering up from the weeds to a walnut tree swerves to—I assume—catch a gnat.
Brief rain showers, one after another. A goldfinch lands sideways on a blossoming mullein stalk as if to compare yellows.
A doe picks her way through the rain-soaked meadow, fawn scrambling along behind. A cerulean warbler’s ascending song.
Downpour. An ant abandons its dead caterpillar. An earthworm dangles from a cardinal’s bill.
A late-morning pause in the rain. The sun comes out, and I notice that the first evening primroses have opened—that flat, obvious yellow.
Rain just past, tree leaves glisten in the sun. A brown thrasher holds forth like a street-corner prophet, hallelujah, hallelujah.