A murky sunrise. Gnatcatchers high in the tulip tree dart and hover, tiny silhouettes against a cross-hatch of stratus clouds.
tulip tree
A shimmer of rain. One of the lower branches on the big tulip tree has been stripped of bark, but its leaves haven’t gotten the news.
Ten percent of the tulip tree’s leaves have turned yellow in response to the drought. Goldfinches pass through like a yellow wind.
A slight breeze brings a shower of petals from the tulip tree, while a squirrel at the top of the black walnut makes it rain catkins.
Drizzle. Just as I get the binoculars out, the cedar waxwings all take off whistling from the tulip tree and its outrageous yellow blooms.
Sun strikes the top of the tulip tree—half-grown leaves vibrating in the wind. In the road, the severed hindquarters of a rabbit.
Clear and cold at sunrise. A nuthatch on the dark side of the tall tulip poplar reverses course and ascends into the sunlit crown.
A cuckoo climbs the trunk of the tulip tree, pausing every few inches to search for prey. The dump truck goes by with a rattle and clang.
A convocation of robins in the tulip tree at the edge of the woods, like pot-bellied businessmen with their self-important tut-tut-tuts.
Wood thrush, cerulean warbler, red-eyed vireo, Baltimore oriole—song by song I tick them off as yellow petals fall from the tulip tree.
The tulip tree’s in bloom. I peer through binoculars at the enormous yellow cups dripping with nectar, lotuses of the upper air.
A breeze stirs the tulip tree from top to bottom, its four-fingered mitts rocking, cautious as the queen of England’s white-gloved wave.
Two squirrels grappling or grooming on a thin tulip poplar branch, among nubbins of new leaves. One slips and falls 30 feet to the ground.
Windy and clearing. Amidst all the twirlers and spiralers, one tulip poplar leaf plummets straight to the ground, folded like an umbrella.