The rains continue. The last peony blossom collapsed in the night, and the last purple iris has opened. Where mowed grass had died, there’s a blush of green. | Continue reading
Rain! That unfamiliar whisper rising to the level of a murmur. And a Carolina wren rushing about, making sure the world knows. | Continue reading
Rising late, I’m in time to see the last cottontail going back under the house for a mid-morning nap. Cuckoos call in the distance. Common yellowthroat. Wood pewee. | Continue reading
Breezy and clear. A deer steps out of the woods, grunting softly to collect her fawn, who comes leaping through the purple pom-poms of dame’s-rocket. | Continue reading
A slight sheen on the leaves at sunrise—what passes for rain these days must’ve fallen. The faintest smell of soil. An ovenbird’s endless lesson. | Continue reading
Peony leaves shriveling from drought even as their antique, cream-white heads still bloom. Ashen skies. A Cooper’s hawk skims the treetops without setting off a single squirrel. | Continue reading
Clear—or what passes for it these days—and cold. The black digger wasp I last saw at dusk hasn’t moved from her spot on the porch column. | Continue reading
A bleary, bloodshot sun in an ash-white sky. Pileated woodpeckers foraging just inside the woods’ edge cackle like sacred clowns. | Continue reading
Cool with thin clouds. Two wood thrushes fly into the woods, dead grass trailing from the leader’s beak. A chipmunk runs under my chair. | Continue reading
Raininess without rain. The peonies remain unbowed. Half-grown bracken fronds in my thin-soiled yard are already turning yellow. | Continue reading
Fire sirens wailing through the gap. A hummingbird comes to the spray from my garden hose, his gorget redder than any flower. | Continue reading
The appeal of a cool, clear morning is beginning to wear as thin as the splay of browning daffodil leaves below the porch. I lapse into fantasies of fog and […] | Continue reading
Today instead of the usual quickie here I wrote a proper Morning Porch poem over at the ol’ Via. Bon appetit. | Continue reading
Cloudless and cool. Craneflies drift through shafts of sun like angels with spider legs, as the afterimages from a night of terrifying dreams fade from view. | Continue reading
Memorial Day. The dame’s-rocket lining the driveway is at its height of purple. A hen turkey at the woods’ edge clucks and calls. Summer’s here. | Continue reading
Filmy-winged insects drift through rays of sun. A wood thrush comes out into the meadow, hopping like a robin along the edge of the drive. | Continue reading
Another clear, cold morning with no dew. Goldfinches gad about in the tops of the locusts, seemingly oblivious to other birds’ territorial obsessions. | Continue reading
Cold and clear 40 minutes before sunrise. A shadow flutters in beside the porch and begins to shriek: whippoorwill. When he finally stops, the meadow is alive with twittering. | Continue reading
Cold and clear. An Acadian flycatcher gleans breakfast from the undersides of leaves, among the green dreadlocks of a blossoming walnut. | Continue reading
As early as I get up, I still feel like a late riser: just past six and the birds are already winding down, the sun glimmering though the trees—an eye reddened by smoke from distant forests. | Continue reading
Humid but blessedly cool; the air’s alive with birdsong and slow-moving insects. Rabbits chase and graze among half-grown bracken. | Continue reading
A few minutes past sunrise, from the still-deep shadows under the trees, the song of a vagrant Swainson’s thrush, hoarse but ethereal, rising in pitch like a rhetorical question. | Continue reading
In the half-light of dawn, a Carolina wren burbles aggressively inches away from my ear. Three fledgling wrens blink awake in the porch rafters. | Continue reading
The snap of a gnatcatcher’s beak behind the lilac, and just beyond, a wood pewee’s melismatic drawl. The sun glimmers briefly through a hole in the clouds. | Continue reading
An American redstart calling from the top of the nearest walnut sounds so insistent, but about what? I’m here! This is my tree! Or maybe just: Good morning! | Continue reading
High-altitude murk gives the low-angled light a timeless feel. It’s barely above freezing, but the birds still sound ecstatic. Tennessee or Blackburnian warbler? That accelerating buzz… | Continue reading
Crystal-clear for the first time since the trees leafed out. A breeze riffles through them—shifting curtains of light and shadow. | Continue reading
Another deliciously cool dawn. A wood thrush on the far side of the yard sings a simplified, less ethereal version of their call—the result no doubt of having been raised too close to traffic or in… | Continue reading
Clear and cool. The sun struggles to infiltrate the forest canopy, where a great-crested flycatcher is whinnying. Gnatcatchers forage on the undersides of leaves. | Continue reading
A catbird running through his dawn monologue is drowned out by a whippoorwill. Fog forms in the lower hollow, extending a ghostly finger into the marsh. | Continue reading
Overcast with a few drops of rain among the bird calls. A hummingbird hovers over a peony bud and flicks it with his tongue. | Continue reading
A turkey hunter’s pickup rumbles past. The moon pale as a glowworm glimmers in the treetops as a whippoorwill clears his throat. | Continue reading
High atmospheric haze from distant forest fires makes for a murky sunrise. An oriole fresh from the tropics sings as brightly as ever from the top of the tallest tree. | Continue reading
Is it clear or clouded over? A gibbous moon turning pink above the ridge provides the answer. The great-crested flycatcher wakes up. | Continue reading
“Light rain” turns out to mean a shimmer of mizzle. The forest belongs once again to the preacher bird—red-eyed vireo—and the ovenbird chanting teacher teacher teacher. | Continue reading
If ever there were a morning to freeze in time forever, this would be it: this quality of light. The converse of wind with new leaves and birds of passage. | Continue reading
Dawn. Strips of cloud redden like a ladder of blood. But for sheer augury, nothing can top a blossoming hawthorn at the forest edge issuing a torrent of wood thrush […] | Continue reading
Ground fog turns the field white at sunrise. A rabbit feeding at the edge of the driveway feels me watching and looks up, eyes unreadable as quicksand. | Continue reading
The cold, wet weather has lifted at last! The sun is fulsome and the bird calls glossy, even lubricous. An ovenbird and a Carolina wren sing back and forth, forest to meadow. | Continue reading
A squirrel going back and forth over a small patch of yard sees me watching and pretends to dig elsewhere. An outraged robin drives a rival from the cedar tree. | Continue reading
For the third morning in a row, the thermometer hovers just above freezing as drizzle falls. Woodpeckers are already at work, beating their heads against trees. | Continue reading
A hair above freezing with rain tapering off. Two skinny deer, still in their gray-brown winter pelts, pick their way through the sodden vegetation. | Continue reading
Cold and half-clear for a red sunrise. The stream is still quiet—more raininess than actual rain. From off in the distance, a wood thrush’s ethereal trill. | Continue reading
Steady rain through the intense green of new leaves, softened by fog. A gray squirrel sits hunched over an acorn under the awning of its tail. | Continue reading
Thin fog full of goldfinch chatter and turkey gobbling. A rare red squirrel emerges from the woods and zips all around the springhouse. | Continue reading
Gray skies at sunrise beginning to tap with fingers of rain on this leaf and that—their first real shower. The avian chorus gains a soft percussion. | Continue reading
Cold and clear aside from some high-atmosphere haze, which gives the light a timeless feel as the sun climbs through a hillside of flowering oaks. | Continue reading
Frost in the yard. How many tender young leaves will collapse and blacken at the sun’s touch? A goldfinch warbles in the treetops. A raven gargles. | Continue reading