Sitting by the front door to enjoy the moon, I’m startled by a rabbit running between my feet in her eagerness to graze. Five minutes later she runs back to evade a weasel loping down the road. Orion emerges from the trees.
moon
10/1/2023
A moon gone slightly flat hangs in the big walnut trees over my mother’s house, which periodically release their ordnance onto the roof with a bang.
9/12/2023
The old moon is now mostly ember, clasped by a thin crescent no brighter than nearby Venus. The loud highway noise from the west that portends nice weather.
9/7/2023
Just at the point where the half-moon loses its share of the shadows, a migrant thrush calls from the woods’ edge: a few soft notes, then silence. The sky turns pink.
8/31/2023
The full moon sits on the horizon, serenaded by cold crickets. Overhead, the Pleiades wink out one by one, leaving Jupiter alone in the crown of a locust.
8/11/2023
Before the first birds, a thin, gaping moon. A last katydid stopping mid-creak. The whine of tires on the highway over the ridge.
8/3/2023
An orange moon gone slightly flat hangs in the southwest at dawn. An eight-point buck grazes under the old lilac.
5/12/2023
A turkey hunter’s pickup rumbles past. The moon pale as a glowworm glimmers in the treetops as a whippoorwill clears his throat.
4/6/2023
First morning back after vacation, the setting moon is somehow already full. A fox sparrow sings beside the old springhouse. Up in the woods, the first blue-headed vireo tunes up.
3/12/2023
Back with the old bank, Daylight Savings and Loan. A fuzzy gibbous moon. Something stirring in the juniper and going back to sleep.
3/9/2023
Crystal clear and quiet from moonset to sunrise and beyond. The sine wave of a pileated woodpecker’s flight through the trees, each widely spaced flap propelling it upward.
3/8/2023
Moon low in the west, as bright as a searchlight. Two silent crows fly over the house. The clouds’ bellies begin to glow.
2/12/2023
Twenty minutes till sunrise, the half moon’s fuzzy ear. A mourning dove starts to call, taking a few tries to get the right notes.
2/8/2023
An hour before sunrise, the yard is flooded with moonlight for a few moments, till the rift in the clouds drifts on to uncover a sliver of dawn sky, the last few stars.