Dawn comes with an inversion layer, traffic noise half-smothering the scattered notes of thrushes fresh from their night flights.
dawn
A clear dawn sky, with the crescent moon like Orion’s boomerang just missing Castor and Pollux. The widely scattered chirps of migrating birds.
Dawn. The last katydid falls silent. The fourth-quarter moon, curled up like a dried fish, disappears into a cloud.
Dawn sky striped with red. A small cloud forms in the hollow. The sleepy croaks of a raven: urk, argh. Then the wren and it’s day.
A planetary conjunction slowly infiltrated by cirrus stained the color of dawn. A barred owl calls and a wild turkey answers.
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, and all the stream’s voices are raised. A squirrel finds a black walnut sticking out of a snowbank and races off with it.
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.
Clear at dawn. The extended gargle of a jake-braking truck. A crow flies silently overhead and returns a minute later with its call.
A Carolina wren heralds the dawn from atop the springhouse roof, his mate counter-singing—as ornithologists call her answering Shhhhhh!
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.
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.
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.
Dawn comes with a light breeze rummaging through the oaks, a freight train laboring up the valley, the tutting of robins.