Cool and still, with sunlight at half strength due to atmospheric haze—smoke from Canada’s burning forests. A wood pewee’s bluesy melisma.
clouds
8/4/2024
Partly cloudy and cool at sunrise, with 97% humidity and very little noise from—I’m guessing—valleys full of fog. A single-engine plane fades into the distance.
7/31/2024
Rain drips from the roof and from the trees. Clouds are thinning out. The topmost leaves of the tall tulip poplar are waving.
7/30/2024
A white sky with a bright gash of sun. The red-eyed vireo falls silent, leaving only two crickets, one who chirps and one who trills. Then, inevitably, the wren.
7/24/2024
Overcast and still. A yellow walnut leaflet flutters down onto the fallen trunk of my favorite climbing tree when I was a kid.
7/22/2024
Cool and still with thin clouds. On the road-bank, a gray squirrel noses about in the leaves, as if searching its memory.
7/20/2024
Sun on leaves fading from shine to sheen. Sound is still out of the east: the slowly expanding crater swallowing farms and forests. It rumbles. It shakes.
7/13/2024
Cool with murky, cloud-mediated sunlight. A hummingbird perches on a walnut branch for thirty seconds, head swiveling all about.
7/5/2024
Humid and still, with clouds trailing low into the treetops—a typical morning in the tropics. The scolding and begging sounds of birds with fledglings.
6/29/2024
Heavily overcast; 88% humidity. I’m clapping out the lives of mosquitoes, one after another—too big and slow for their own good. A breeze springs up.
6/23/2024
Overcast. Sunrise is when the crows wake up. A large brown moth tucks itself into the eaves.
6/16/2024
Cool and quiet, with the sun half-dimmed by thin clouds. A series of loud wingbeats from the forest. A gurgle from my gut.
6/14/2024
Overcast at sunrise. The jumping spider who lives under my chair comes topside for a brief scuttle about. A red-bellied woodpecker bangs on his morning drum.
6/6/2024
Low clouds trailing drizzle settle into the trees, where a wood thrush and a wood pewee are calling. From the wet meadow, an indigo bunting’s bone-dry song.