Clear, cold, the kind of morning where you can hear for miles, noisy with cars, trucks, trains, jets, and chipmunks standing their ground.
Plummer’s Hollow
9/16/2008
Up too early, I sit out front and watch the full moon moving in and out of thin clouds: moments of clarity interspersed with bleariness.
9/15/2008
Where daffodils bloomed in April, goldenrod sways—a more worldly yellow. The distant hurricane makes a roosting monarch flap its wings.
9/14/2008
Pulling rampant stiltgrass out of the garden next to the porch to create a spot for a potted yellow mum, I uncover the jawbone of a horse.
9/13/2008
If this were my first dawn here, I might startle at the white faces in the darkness: snakeroot. The familiar cries of a bird I cannot name.
9/12/2008
A warm night. With no inversion layer, dawn comes quietly except for the ever-present crickets. A patter of rain approaches and retreats.
9/11/2008
5:30. The black cat is only distinguishable by its movement up the driveway, and only if I focus a little to the side. The sound of engines.
9/10/2008
Clear, cold. The flare of a satellite is an omen: the sun will rise. CERN has so far failed to birth a black hole. Random chirps.
9/9/2008
Thunderstorms since before dawn. Light comes in sudden, brief installments that freeze the raindrops falling from the roof—eyes in the dark.
9/8/2008
In the chill of dawn, sounds come as if from a great distance: wood thrush chirping, crow calls, wren twitter, the Monday whine of traffic.
9/7/2008
Still, clear, 50°F. The sunlight spreading into the treetops is noisy with bluejays calling “Hey! Hey!”—or more likely, “Acorns! Acorns!”
9/6/2008
Hundreds of miles to the southeast, a hurricane churns. I sit in the dark listening to scattered rain, a faint rustle of a breeze, crickets.
9/5/2008
The brown towers of dock seed below the railing tremble in sequence: a warbler in its fall plumage, a safe and anonymous greenish yellow.
9/4/2008
At half-light, the scattered calls of migrant wood thrushes, dropping into the trees from their all-night flights and looking for breakfast.