A half hour after sunrise, a rattling in the fallen leaves: raindrops! Slowly accelerating into an actual shower. Which peters out much too soon.
Plummer’s Hollow
Late in rising, I’m grateful to the oaks for still holding leaves—I don’t need sunglasses. My brother texts: Savannah sparrows in the field!
Pale columns of sky all along the ridge. Frost as white as my breath. A rising tide of chirps and trills as sunrise draws near.
Cold and mostly overcast, but the rising sun strikes my face a full hour earlier due to overnight thinning of the leaves.
Dawn. Clouds glow with the lights from town. The great bulk of the lilac against the dark woods, trembling in the wind.
Heavily overcast and quiet at dawn. A low surf of crickets. From the spruce grove a half mile away, a barred owl’s hoo-aw.
Overcast with fog that thins out for the purported sunrise. It’s warm enough that one tree cricket trills in the herb garden.
High, slow-moving reefs of cloud at sunrise. The white-throated sparrows in the meadow conclude their chittering and go their separate ways.
Dawn. Low over the trees, the last sliver of moon like fangs of a snake trying to swallow a dark, glowing egg.
Clear and still. I watch the sun inch through the half-turned canopies of the oaks. A chipmunk begins his morning chant.
Two degrees below freezing and clear at sunrise. A falling tulip tree leaf lands with an audible tick.
Dawn brings a chittering of sparrows from the meadow. It’s cold. Frost edges the periwinkle leaves.
In the half-light of dawn, wet snow falls through the dimly glowing autumn leaves. A white-throated sparrow’s plaintive note.
A cold and windy dawn. The crescent moon drowns in a sorcery of pink.