A tiger swallowtail visiting garlic mustard—wan white flower heads momentarily covered in glory. A blue jay yells from the highest treetop.
tiger swallowtail butterfly
It’s humid. A bluebird sings up by the garage, and in the woods, a black-throated green warbler. The first tiger swallowtail flutters past.
The buzzing dog-fights of carpenter bees competing for access to the porch’s old wood. The first tiger swallowtail flutters into the yard.
The clouds of white snakeroot in my yard host one tiger swallowtail, glamorous as a celebrity in a trailer court. A raven’s metallic croak.
White clouds of shadbush blossoms off in the woods. A tiger swallowtail circles the yard—the silent applause of its great yellow wings.
A tiger swallowtail flies past in one direction, a cabbage white in another. I sit reading Rubén Darío until everything seems symbolic.
The groundhog emerges from her sun-flooded burrow beside the porch and whistles in alarm. The shadow of a tiger swallowtail crosses my legs.
A tiger swallowtail butterfly glows in the strong sun like stained glass. In the shade, a freshly bathed phoebe straightens its feathers.
A silk thread—spiderweb? Caterpillar line?—fetches up against the hairs of my arm, sticky, barely visible. A swallowtail’s random dance.
Yellow stained-glass wings of a tiger swallowtail circling the shadowed yard. The smell of cowshit wafts up from Sinking Valley.
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.
Tiger and spicebush swallowtails circle the white lilac. Leaves blow backwards. A ruby-throated hummingbird hovers a foot from my nose.
A groundhog among the daffodils rears up on its haunches like the very large squirrel that it is. A tiger swallowtail careens past.