Sparrows swiveling the feeder so the seed whorls so the dove can come from its fix in the waver of cedars. Some one makes a husk note that a pair can flare into as if built from that scutch of the undergrowth— roughening birds, birds skimming into slits they fit into in trees between loads of the branches— through paths through encampment go dozens who work the steep yews combing the motes of the dove or milling its ground, shifting its bandings of gray and mole gray, taupe and slate gray beginning to scuff into lozenges, drab and saxe blue— one of them nicking the field where there's tilt off center flocked in the shreds of new balsam or come from the rendering junctions or sorts through the deal— afterward seamed in the fledge— coal and flush gray, fuse and rush wove or let go
From Micrographia. Copyright © 2009 by Emily Wilson. Used with permission of The University of Iowa Press.