A bright blue morning. The wail of sirens somewhere to the east—until the wind shifts and I hear nothing but the whispering of oaks.
wind
Warm eddies mingle with the cold. A flock of sparrows moves through the meadow, singing, twittering, setting the goldenrod heads asway.
In the big oaks tossing in the wind, finally some splotches of color. A freight train’s out-of-tune horn blows a chord unknown to music.
The wind persists, and now that the walnut trees are bare I can see the aspens by the marsh, their perpetually agitated crowds yellowing up.
Snowflakes backlit by the sun. Unlike rain they don’t just fall; they fly. A strip of bark is draped over a birch twig like a spare tie.
Gusty winds. The sun appears several times a minute to light up the forest, which today is noticeably more open, yellower, more ablaze.
In the valley, two train whistles—one high, one low. Down-hollow, two drumming woodpeckers—likewise. A clearing wind dries the heavy dew.
All-day rain. During a brief lull, a small, mixed flock of birds moves through the treetops like leaves flying upstream against the wind.
Storm winds but no storm; leaves flash their pale undersides in the sun. The yellow ones fly free, tumbling like defective butterflies.
The random yet purposeful flight of a great-spangled fritillary. The wind dies and a piece of thistle down descends straight into the yard.
On the underside of a porch railing, a hornet gathers a mouthful of wood. A small yellow leaf caught in a spiderweb twirls in the wind.
Everything moves in the wind but the broken dog statue, the dead rosebush, and the five-fingered cherry stump raised as if in surrender.
Wind salted with rain. A male indigo bunting clings to a black cherry branch like the one blue leaf, fluttering with the rest.
The leaves on the sapling tulip tree are already big enough to blow backwards. A tanager’s plucked-string call. It begins to sleet.