My favourite ridgetop tea-drinking spot is quieter each time I visit. Gone (or hiding while they molt) are the nesting tanagers and warblers. A wood pewee still calls, and a blue-headed vireo interjects at one point, but that’s about it. A nearby black gum has begun to color up, anticipating early migration and the need for signal flags saying FREE LUNCH.
fog walker
the millipede’s carpet
of legs
wren wiping his bill
on the ridgeline of the roof
his mate already brooding
on a second clutch
the first clouds always
look innocent enough
until they open
their rainy mouths
catbird singing out
instructions for assembly
a deer sneezing
from her day bed in the weeds
this is how one gauges
one’s aptitude for silence
in Figure 1 we can see
how the trend lines wander
invasive slug
the wood pewee bending
his one note
cool morning
the sun catches a spider
patching holes
Mind the gap they said
and I didn’t. There’s
a storm wind but
no storm. Children
play in the distance
or maybe fight. Don’t
mind me I murmur to a deer
trotting past while I type
this on my phone standing
still as a tree at dusk
just vibrating a little
from a Swainson’s thrush
on his yearly trip north.
I’m mindful that everything
human in this hollow
comes from the gap
Standing outside my front door on this rainy night is the closest thing to a son or daughter I’ll ever have: an eastern red cedar tree, which I found and transplanted when it was one or two years old back in 1993, and has since grown into a bit of a monster, towering over the house. The old place in Maine where we lived till I was five had a number of juniper bushes in the former pasture, where I used to play a lot, and I think that’s what appealed to me about having a closely related species right by the door. And sure, I knew it would turn into a tree rather than a bush, but I still thought it would stay on the small side. It hasn’t — much to the delight of roosting songbirds. I have to prune branches that rub against the roof, but still, on stormy nights, I hear it thump, thump, thumping against the house.
through gaps in the hills
a river of fog
and me here on this wren’s powerline right-of-way
eating lowbush blueberries
It’s not every year we get snow in dogwood season. This particular year, the wild weather simply adds to the impression that the world is completely out of whack.
spiderweb
catching snowflakes
their little spikes
Marooned in our homes, tempers fray. We wonder how long this will go on, worry about finances and food shortages. I watch a pair of scarlet tanagers—treetop birds—reduced to feeding near the ground and foraging for invertebrates in the creek.
redder
than our open mouths
tanager
But spring is always a puzzle: the innumerable ways that spikiness blossoms and leaves us.
former field
the ruffed grouse makes a drum
out of thin air
yellow-bellied sapsucker
tapping
its true name
sprung fully formed
like a god from the lung
will you rot back
into a travesty of spring
what birds would roost
in the untuning forks of your limbs
and what would they sing
like a real tree do you yearn
to be free of oxygen
bronchial to a fault
would you burn
brings marvels:
a phoebe diving for snow fleas,
the track of a chipmunk,
a turkey vulture flapping its wings.
25 years
since the snow that brought it down
measured in moss
after the chainsaw
the silence
big as ever
windthrow
ice storm
blizzard
where are the canopy gaps of yesteryear
one small bird
to salvage all those logs
winter wren song