Notions
September 16, 2014 / Seen at Cottage 5, Cape Cod
We have been coming here for over forty years. For some years now I have kept a little record of my favorite natural history sighting or experience of each day. I allow myself only one short line for each entry.
See if you can see my sightings in your own mind's eye, and travel to Cape Cod as you do.
9/3/12 Bone-white, new-snow white, the slash of gull on blue
9/3/13 CHONG! The huge black snake, launches, kills, eats the vole
9/3/14 Chipmunk fur against my bare instep (so soft) as I sit still in meditation
9/4/12 The imposingly large and lovely skunk hoovers up the birds’ seed
9/4/13 Perfection of straight-edge: the horizon at sea
9/4/14 Pond in miniature atop seawall rock contains a meadow and its browsers too
9/5/12 Sodden, the chipmunk nevertheless forages for seed
9/5/13 Neon green puddles at the horizon, the Big Green Flash
9/5/14 The hawk sails in, looks intently, sails off: chipmunk SAFE once more
9/6/12 Incoming tide flows in energetic silver fingers along the miniature sand canyons
9/6/13 One hundred gulls float quietly just offshore: why?
9/6/14 In the cedar swamp, will we see small dinosaurs?
9/7/12 I sit at evening, pinioned by a shaft of light, O joy.
9/7/13 Did the Nauset Indians applaud the sunset?
9/7/14 My feeder birds—chickadees, titmice—holler. What do they see? I perceive nothing.
9/8/12 Look! A black lab, swimming longshore! No! a seal!
9/8/13 Narrow crescent moon escorted by Venus.
9/8/14 The errant chickadee mistakes my upheld wine glass for a perch: OH!!
9/9/12 Rabbit sits catlike in the darkening path.
9/9/13 Small child in raccoon suit at the feeder? No, in the flashlight it’s seen to be the real thing.
9/9/14 Waters in silver bands lie under a silver sky, no color at all.
9/10/12 God said, Here is a brand new animal, a SKUNK I am calling it. See how white, how black he is.
9/10/13 Streams of transparent fishes, like shadows of themselves.
9/10/14 Campfires glow on the beach; laughter heard faintly.