A half moon hangs overhead, its light lost to the dawn. A bat makes one last circuit of the yard, where the white tops of snakeroot are beginning to show.
A desultory dawn chorus of one Carolina wren and a towhee. I consider baring an arm to stop the mosquitoes from whining in my ear.
Clear and still, except for some noise from the quarry—the crusher digesting its breakfast of stone. A deer’s footsteps up in the woods. A scolding squirrel.
Another cold, clear morning. Robins streaked by the molt contend with blue jays for the best perches in the tops of the tall locusts, answering jeers with tuts.
Clear, cold, and still. A hummingbird finds the one wild bergamot blossom hiding next to the porch and circles its purple mop-head, tonguing a dozen tubes.
Clear and cold, with an inversion layer making the hollow noisy with traffic. When it wanes: church bells. A blue jay’s distress call.
Windy and cold, with the sun in and out of clouds. The Carolina wren’s usual enthusiasm sparks a red-eyed vireo to call exactly once.
Light rain at sunrise, drumming on the porch roof—not enough to still the crickets or keep the hummingbird from her appointed rounds.
Everything drips and glistens after last night’s storm. Red-bellied woodpeckers exchange calls then lapse into silence. A distant train.
A pause between showers. The thud of a walnut dropped by a squirrel. A housefly circles the porch. The rain starts back up.
The sun in fragments through the trees behind the old dead maple, which has a distinctly joyous appearance now that it’s shed its top half.
Cool and still, with sunlight at half strength due to atmospheric haze—smoke from Canada’s burning forests. A wood pewee’s bluesy melisma.
Cool and clear at sunrise. A yellow walnut leaf rests on the end table instead of a book. The slow motor of a bumblebee.
A meteor streaks the dawn sky—a fast, yellow brushstroke. From over the ridge, the quarry’s dull grind. The first, faint twittering from the meadow.