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.
Plummer’s Hollow
Where daffodils bloomed in April, goldenrod sways—a more worldly yellow. The distant hurricane makes a roosting monarch flap its wings.
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.
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.
A warm night. With no inversion layer, dawn comes quietly except for the ever-present crickets. A patter of rain approaches and retreats.
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.
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.
Thunderstorms since before dawn. Light comes in sudden, brief installments that freeze the raindrops falling from the roof—eyes in the dark.
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.
Still, clear, 50°F. The sunlight spreading into the treetops is noisy with bluejays calling “Hey! Hey!”—or more likely, “Acorns! Acorns!”
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.
The brown towers of dock seed below the railing tremble in sequence: a warbler in its fall plumage, a safe and anonymous greenish yellow.
At half-light, the scattered calls of migrant wood thrushes, dropping into the trees from their all-night flights and looking for breakfast.
The rending of a limb or small tree down in the hollow, followed by… nothing. A phoebe sings a few bars of his old song and falls silent.