Half awake at half-light. The dawn chorus starts promptly at 5:00 with field sparrow and towhee, then song sparrow, phoebe, robin. Train horn.
dawn
Friday February 04, 2022
Dawn, and all the stream’s voices are raised. A squirrel finds a black walnut sticking out of a snowbank and races off with it.
Monday December 20, 2021
Power outage at -9C. Moonlight gives way to dawnlight with the purring of a generator. It lugs down and I know my mother must be making breakfast.
Thursday December 16, 2021
Clear at dawn. The extended gargle of a jake-braking truck. A crow flies silently overhead and returns a minute later with its call.
Tuesday December 14, 2021
A Carolina wren heralds the dawn from atop the springhouse roof, his mate counter-singing—as ornithologists call her answering Shhhhhh!
Sunday November 28, 2021
An inch of wet snow clinging to everything: that clean smell in the half-dark of dawn. When my furnace cycles off, a great silence descends.
Saturday November 27, 2021
Overcast, so it’s hard to tell exactly when moonlight gives way to dawn. A hunter’s flashlight climbs the ridge and is lost among the trees.
Wednesday November 24, 2021
An hour before sunrise, a great-horned owl calls in the distance—just audible over the sounds of traffic. My breath rises like a rope trick.
Wednesday November 10, 2021
Dawn comes with a light breeze rummaging through the oaks, a freight train laboring up the valley, the tutting of robins.
Tuesday November 09, 2021
Dawn silence. A distant Carolina wren. I’m standing outside in my PJs enjoying the relative warmth (38F) when I spot the first cloud in days.
Thursday November 04, 2021
25F degrees at dawn. A bat flies low over the meadow as the white-throated sparrows tune up. Frost-encrusted blades of grass seem to glow.
Wednesday November 03, 2021
First frost, and the thinnest small boat of a moon riding low on the horizon with the bright darkness of its cargo.
Monday November 01, 2021
They’re shapeshifting daily now, the faces in the thinning treetops silhouetted against the dawn sky. I push my glasses down to unblur the moon.
Thursday October 28, 2021
Mercury rises just as the stars begin to fade. A jet flies under it. A lone goose flies over it. I look away and lose it in the dawn sky.