Sunrise, and seven species of birds are calling—but not the phoebe, who flies in and out of the old nest under the springhouse eaves.
sunrise
3/11/2016
Sunrise tints the clouds orange. I squint through eyelids made bleary with pink-eye and lack of sleep. A downy woodpecker’s soft rattle.
10/27/2015
With the leaves half down, I can see inside the forest again: squirrels leaping from branch to branch, a ridgetop flock, the rising sun.
9/15/2015
Sunrise stains the treetops. The woods are full of anxious-sounding calls: chipmunks, jays, nuthatches, an endlessly scolding squirrel…
8/17/2015
Still cool at sunrise. A large beetle zooms past. Faint noise from the highway. The desultory calls of a red-eyed vireo.
7/23/2015
Deep blue sky, with the sun gilding the treetops. A bumblebee circles the bergamot patch, her small engine running fine despite the cold.
7/16/2015
Clear and cold as October, with an inversion layer to match: the rising sun grinds and thunders with the sound of the quarry to our east.
6/22/2015
Sunrise, and the cricket music is augmented by a trio of chipping sparrows, the fledgling begging for food while its parents mate.
5/29/2015
Cool at sunrise, and with warmer air aloft, the roar of the quarry to our east rolls in over the ridge as if it were the sun’s own engines.
3/16/2015
An inversion layer at sunrise. Above the roar of traffic from over the ridge, a bluebird’s warble. The clouds flare pink and slowly fade.
2/24/2015
-21C. With the inner door open, frost forms on the storm door in minutes. The sun through the trees is spiky as a Medieval implement of war.
1/28/2015
At sunrise, one shaft of sun reaches all the way through the woods to illuminate the end of the springhouse. The western ridge glows orange.
1/10/2015
Another zero-degree morning. The wind hisses in the tops of the pines. A blue jay squeaks like a rusty hinge. The sun comes up.
10/26/2014
A katydid clings to the side of the house at sunrise, its veined leaf of a body immobile in the cold but still as green as July.