Cardinal joined by a whippoorwill. The white shapes in the yard turn out to be snakeroot.
white snakeroot
First light. Ghostly figures in the meadow shrink into common snakeroot. The distant gargle of a truck jake-breaking off the interstate.
The flat white sky prompts me to notice that the white snakeroot—a plant that clouds up the meadow, being toxic to deer—has gone to seed.
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.
Wasps wallow through mounds of snakeroot flowers. At the woods’ edge, a yellow leaf trapped by a caterpillar thread never stops twirling.
Even at late morning, it’s chilly when the sun goes in. The yard is now white with snakeroot flowers. The distant sound of a power saw.
A scattering of white in my overgrown garden: soapwort, bindweed, fleabane, snakeroot. The sky brightens. A towhee calls from the lilac.
In the half-light of dawn, white snakeroot glowing in the meadow, the unending shhhhh of tree crickets, clatter of a squirrel venturing out.
Scattered drips of dew from the top roof. A doe and fawn ghost by along the woods’ edge, the fawn’s spots as faded as snakeroot flowers.
Rain starts almost imperceptibly, thickening from shimmer to mist to curtain. Early goldenrod and white snakeroot are both fading to brown.
A bristly white caterpillar on the freshly painted white porch railing. The sky too is white, and the lawn with its banks of snakeroot.