A mottled gray sky all the way to the horizon, not brightening even for the sunrise, let alone for the crows with their many complaints or the red-bellied woodpecker jeering from the top of a black locust.
American crow
An aging contrail stretches toward a sun half-hidden by cloud—fuzzy point at the end of an exclamation mark. Three crows take their argument elsewhere. The furnace under the house shivers to life.
A scurf of snow on the ground. A few fat clouds, barely moving, turn orange. A lone crow in the treetops coos like a dove.
Cold and still for the opening day of rifle season. Distant booms set the crows off. The sun is a bright smudge in a sky more white than blue.
A dozen geese come honking over the house, interrupting three crows sharing their excitement over a venison gut pile up in the woods.
A flat white sky crossed by a crow. Woods’-edge chipmunks in a chipping contest. The color.
Under a thin grin of moon, the maples reclaiming their red. Three crows wake up with awe in their throats.
Heavily overcast—what the weather app calls “light rain”—with a crow yelling in the distance and a yellow-bellied sapsucker mewing like a kitten.
Another autumnal dawn. A screech owl trills from just inside the woods. Crows head past en route to an angry mob. The fluting of geese.
Fog lingering into mid-morning. Whatever the crows are up to, it involves a lot of begging sounds. The wild garlic heads are beginning to split.
Sun through thin clouds. A silent crow skims the treetops where a cuckoo coos. Someone’s offsprings beg for more breakfast.
Moon low in the west, as bright as a searchlight. Two silent crows fly over the house. The clouds’ bellies begin to glow.
The western ridge turns barn-red with sunrise. As it fades to gold, down in the hollow a mob of crows starts up, jeering, denouncing.
Treetops rock and sway as the dawn sky shuffles patches of darkness and patches of light. The inevitable crow.