A dark and rainy dawn. One especially well-harmonized train horn and the sparrows and wrens wake up.
dawn
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.
October 6, 2021
Overcast at dawn. The silence is broken by the periodic splats of black walnuts. A barred owl’s single, round note.
October 2, 2021
Mares’ tails reddening in the east. The reedy songs of white-throated sparrows. A raven’s nasal croak.
October 1, 2021
Cold and clear. Stars fade as the ground fog grows, partly lit by the crescent moon, partly by the dawn.
September 20, 2021
Spring peeper just after moonset. Then whippoorwill. Wood thrush. Carolina wren. Phoebe. A pileated woodpecker cackles and it’s day.
September 19, 2021
5:30. A pair of barred owls exchange queries as the sky begins to brighten. A screech owl’s quaver. Sudden loud wingbeats in the meadow.
September 15, 2021
Dawn is its own thing—not just a transition, I think, as fog forms and grows. When it lifts, the no-longer-dark meadow glows goldenrod-yellow.
September 13, 2021
Breezy and overcast at dawn. From up in the woods, the declarative WHO! of a barred owl. The last katydid rattles to a stop.
September 11, 2021
Dawn. A coyote yipping and howling in the distance. The old hornets’ nest under the eaves gives birth to a Carolina wren.
September 10, 2021
In one hole in the clouds a meteor; in another the dawn. The scattered notes of night-flying migrants coming down to roost. A quarry truck beeping.
September 3, 2021
5:58 am. The crescent moon is increasingly alone in the sky as the dawn light metastasizes. A distant whippoorwill.
August 25, 2021
In the dawn light, a hummingbird double-checks that I’m not a flower, hovering over my head like a wild thought.
August 20, 2021
Cardinal joined by a whippoorwill. The white shapes in the yard turn out to be snakeroot.