The Ends of Days and Small Creatures

It surprises me how infrequently we come across dead animals and birds. When we do, the small bodies sometimes have an unsettling beauty.

A juvenile cormorant curls gracefully in a ditch by the side of the road

A tiny velvety mole, possibly a victim of Esau’s vigilante activities, lies on the grass in eastern Long Island

In Central Park, near Frederick Douglass Plaza, a flash of brilliant green and yellow at the base of a tree reveals itself to be, not a discarded plastic toy, as I first thought, but the body of a parakeet.

Days end on Long Island

over the Hudsonand, most strangely and spectacularly, in Dallas, where the divided sky lingers until full dark