First light. The silence is broken by a rustle in the leaves, followed a little later by the hollow sound of a creek stone being flipped.
dawn
12/30/2011
A dusting of snow on every branch and twig. In the half-dark, kinglets bob in the top of a black birch—their high, thin calls.
12/21/2011
A dark dawn. As light grows, the rain falls harder, thundering on the porch roof, drowning out all other sounds but a locomotive’s wail.
11/30/2011
A rabbit wanders back and forth in the half-light of dawn—a nervous eater, hunched around its hunger. When it freezes, it almost disappears.
11/29/2011
Dawn light turns everything briefly to gold: house, trees, the three deer that run a short way into the woods and stop, nostrils flaring.
11/27/2011
Dawn gives a rust-red belly to the clouds. Over the stream, I’m astonished to hear the ethereal notes of a hermit thrush song.
10/16/2011
At first light, some newly toppled tree creaks in the wind. What I’d taken for the dog statue on the far side of the yard swivels its ears.
10/3/2011
Dawn. A migrant wood thrush flits from branch to branch along the edge of the woods. In the yard, a grown fawn nuzzles its mother’s neck.
9/15/2011
Watching night turn to day—a thing that should be gradual, but instead proceeds by small leaps of realization: “It’s lighter now!” Rain.
6/7/2011
The dawn sky turns salmon. Down by the stream, the hollow cough of a deer. A swig of coffee and I’m off to count birds before the rain.
6/2/2011
Dawn finds the walking onions still as trolls, except for a slight swaying—no doubt the wind. A mosquito bite swells between my knuckles.
3/26/2011
Clear and bracing, like a shot of vodka. The thirteen cattail heads beside the springhouse sway gently in the dawn light.
2/9/2011
Dawn: a thin band of vivid pink. I glance down at my coffee, and when I look back it’s gone, the sky’s gray. A titmouse’s monotonous song.
1/7/2011
Dawn unveils a new snowfall light as down, all horizontal limbs redrawn in white like colonies of the horizon. I sit clipping my nails.