Mockingbirds, Clouds.

Both the same color, for starters. On the docket this morning: Two mockingbirds down and out of a magnolia and chasing each other — and the dog, a little bit. Flight confuses the living hell out of me. Also: A man in his eighties doing laps around the cul-de-sac down at the 600s end of Elam. Hunched hard over, shuffling, looking like it hurt him. But taking his laps around the circle all the same. And a green and silver heating oil truck banging through the neighborhood.

There's something out west, something darkening, even though there's nothing in the forecast. I cheated and looked at the radar and there's a blob of what might be light rain that might get us. If it's even raining, that is, and not some trick of the radar, not something evaporating before it hits the ground. We could use it. We could always use it.

Down on that far end of our street it's a little bit more like being in the woods. The dog sniffed every leaf in every yard. Took us half an hour to go a quarter-mile. And so long as I'm listing: Carolina wrens, hawk, crows, jays. The usual suspects.