How does the poison ivy know to turn the same salmon as the red maple it has infiltrated? A phoebe chases a kinglet from the roadside weeds.
red maple
May 15, 2010
From the luminous green wall of the woods, a pewee calls. Maple keys come spinning, take the place of yesterday’s hailstones on the porch.
April 21, 2010
A scarlet bough at the woods’ edge: I peer through binoculars at the first red maple keys. Deer straggle by in their ragged spring coats.
March 31, 2010
Clear, clear, clear: say the same thing often enough, the cardinal knows, and one day you’ll be right. The east is red with maple blossoms.
March 28, 2010
Overcast and cold. Ten feet up the trunk of the big maple, a fox squirrel drinks sap from a slit the woodpeckers have widened.
September 6, 2009
Overnight, two maples on the far side of the road have begun to go orange. And between me and them, a small pale spider with her tiny prey.
March 28, 2009
Dark morning. The fox squirrel’s tail flickers orange from the back of the big red maple whose buds have swollen into dime-sized stoplights.
April 13, 2008
Jurassic silhouettes of wild turkeys against the brown and green field. A cold rain. Maple blossoms glow orange and scarlet in the woods.