Dave Bonta's piece mixes short prose notes with two haiku, and together they capture a late-summer visit to a favourite spot for drinking tea outdoors. The speaker notices what has gone missing: the nesting songbirds are quieter, maybe hiding, maybe moulting. A few voices remain, like the wood pewee and the vireo. Even the black gum tree is changing colour, and the speaker jokes that its leaves are like signal flags advertising a free lunch for migrating birds.
The tone is relaxed, wry and attentive. The speaker corrects themselves ("I take it back"), as if thinking aloud, and admits that the silence isn't total once you sit long enough. The mood is gentle and a little wistful, since the season is turning, but it's never gloomy. The haiku zoom in on small things: a millipede's many legs, a patch of sunlight on a closed book. The book stays shut because the real reading happens outdoors, in the woods.