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.
dawn
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.
Saturday October 23, 2021
A dark and rainy dawn. One especially well-harmonized train horn and the sparrows and wrens wake up.
Saturday October 16, 2021
The last star blinks out just as rain begins to tap on the roof. A spring pepper calls. Dawn begins to seem like a possibility.
Wednesday October 06, 2021
Overcast at dawn. The silence is broken by the periodic splats of black walnuts. A barred owl’s single, round note.
Saturday October 02, 2021
Mares’ tails reddening in the east. The reedy songs of white-throated sparrows. A raven’s nasal croak.
Friday October 01, 2021
Cold and clear. Stars fade as the ground fog grows, partly lit by the crescent moon, partly by the dawn.