Tongues make the best flags: more instagrammatic photos

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A spectre is haunting my Instagram page — the spectre of Trumpism. But more cheerful subjects, such as death, imprisonment, and the evolution of teeth, also continue to pop up.

A deflated balloon in the woods with a picture of a baby elephant on it tan the words "baby boy."
The shining lies may seem harmless, but they are indigestible and will cause acute distress to many we never see.

Close-up of lichen colonies within clearly defined boundaries on a rock.
Without borders, how would a just God know whom to favor?
Three gold-and-red oak leaves backlit by the sun.
There’s no such thing as a glorious death, only a glorious end of life.
The twining double trunk of a beech tree against the sky.
Dancers with no heads reach for celestial bodies with no limbs.
Leaves trapped in steel grating in a culvert covering.
Penitentiary: such a Christian word for something so destructive to the spirit.
Close-up of black birch bark, the horizontal lines dived by a vertical division into a sunlit "page" and a shadowed "page."
There are two versions of the Book of the Damned, one written in blood and the other in tears of regret.
A large mushroom, desicated so that its gills appear tooth-like, laid out on the exposed grain of a log.
Teeth are thought to have evolved from scales, which would make them older siblings to feathers.
Two autumn-colored blackberry leaves with the wandering trails of feaf-miners converging at their tips.
Our separate searches happened to converge. That’s one explanation.
Two boards in an old fence barely held together by a rusty hinge, the gap also bridged by a fallen oak leaf.
Solidarity: one part solidity, one part air.
Dried-out, purple mushrooms clustered together on a mossy stump.
Back when everyone wore hats, even a racist mob could look genteel.
A dead Rudbeckia flower with curled and shriveled yellow petals.
If the November sun looks wan, maybe it’s because it gets so little love.
Close-up of the dark, weathered grain in a log with a cluster of swirling, eye-shaped knots.
Awoken suddenly from a too-long nap and staring all about: that’s what it feels like.
A worried-looking "eye" on a beech tree next to a column of horizontal lines.
You can read the worry in our faces, line by line.
A leafless, decrepit old pear tree still holding a number of yellow pears.
How can we be a banana republic when we still have the most bombs?
Close-up of a shed snake skin on a fallen leaf.
“I am the most pro-life president ever. You could call me the president for life.”
Round, red fungi on the reddish, cut end of a log.
Tongues make the best flags. Their freedom protects ours.

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