red maple

The leaves on one branch of the big maple have turned yellow. The shrill cries of the resident crows driving an invader off the mountain.

In the soft light of a half-hidden sun, the old red maple beside the road is ruddy with blossoms. The sound of teeth chiselling a walnut.

Gray rain ripples the air—November’s fur blurring the last splashes of bright October: salmon-colored cherry leaves, a vivid limb of maple.

The thermometer’s big arrow points straight at 0°C. It was too windy for frost, but fallen red maple leaves cradle white grains of ice.

Seeing the big maple silhouetted against the dawn sky, I notice for the first time it’s half dead. A clanking as the quarry comes to life.

A new face in moss on the trunk of the big maple: bulbous clown nose, Mona Lisa smile. A dragonfly quarters over the permanently damp yard.

Cold and windy. Maple seeds spin down from the overcast sky, as if some psychotic cherub were plucking the wings from chitinous angels.

The woods’ edge is a collage of pastels: just-opened leaves, catkins, maple keys. The old cherry stump chirps like a phone: baby bluebirds.

In the mid-morning quiet, weak sunlight sets the blossoming maple trees aglow: clouds of red and orange all along the woods’ edge.

Just inside the woods, a white spear-tip where a maple’s top snapped off last June, sad as the spikes on the buck standing in the driveway.

The neighbor’s rooster is beginning to sound like a rooster. I notice that one side of the big maple has turned prematurely red.

A steady thrum of rain on the porch roof. The big red maple at the corner of the old corral is a cloud of salmon blossoms in the half light.

A squirrel tumbles out of the big maple and catches itself in the top of a locust sapling, tail wrapping around the branch like a fifth leg.

A squirrel hurls itself from maple to locust, falling, grabbing hold. It runs to the end of a limb and stops, staring across at the walnut.