Out before sunrise to watch a thunderstorm that never appears. The clouds half-clear. Squirrels go about their business.
clouds
At 8:15 the sun almost comes out. Half an hour later, it’s still almost out. My faint shadow gives up after the feet.
Clouds gravid with rain at sunrise. A wood thrush calls quietly. In the top of the tallest oak, a squirrel’s silhouette begins its descent.
Sun through a scrim of cloud. The first white snakeroot is in bloom. A Linne’s cicada rattles like a bad engine.
The third autumnal morning in a row, with clouds introducing a more melancholy note: nesting time is over, the sky road calls…
Milk-white sky and the white noise of tree crickets. A pileated woodpecker cackles to herself at the top of a tall locust.
Overcast at sunrise. A meadowhawk dragonfly zips back and forth, inches above the rain-soaked vegetation.
Lightly overcast and cool. A molting warbler skulks in the old lilac, foraging for breakfast on the undersides of leaves.
Cool, overcast, and humid. A breeze brings the smell of ozone and a hush of rain finishing its journey down from the trees.
Sun rising into clouds. The mob of wild garlic heads in the meadow are beginning to shed their white hoods.
Heavily overcast; on the weather app, it’s raining. The sky lightens; on the weather app, bright sunshine. From Mom’s house, the measured tones of Morning Edition.
Partly cloudy and cool. A large garter snake emerges from the stone wall and curls up on a sunny corner of the porch.
In the flat light of a cloudy morning, bracken fronds glow like the sun-bleached rib cages of seraphim—skeletons gone rococo.
Clear sky, sun in the treetops… “Cloudy conditions will continue all day,” my phone admonishes. The big tulip tree releases a yellow leaf.