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.
dawn
Overcast at dawn. The silence is broken by the periodic splats of black walnuts. A barred owl’s single, round note.
Mares’ tails reddening in the east. The reedy songs of white-throated sparrows. A raven’s nasal croak.
Cold and clear. Stars fade as the ground fog grows, partly lit by the crescent moon, partly by the dawn.
Spring peeper just after moonset. Then whippoorwill. Wood thrush. Carolina wren. Phoebe. A pileated woodpecker cackles and it’s day.
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.
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.
Breezy and overcast at dawn. From up in the woods, the declarative WHO! of a barred owl. The last katydid rattles to a stop.
Dawn. A coyote yipping and howling in the distance. The old hornets’ nest under the eaves gives birth to a Carolina wren.
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.
5:58 am. The crescent moon is increasingly alone in the sky as the dawn light metastasizes. A distant whippoorwill.
In the dawn light, a hummingbird double-checks that I’m not a flower, hovering over my head like a wild thought.
Cardinal joined by a whippoorwill. The white shapes in the yard turn out to be snakeroot.
Ten minutes before first light, the first distant, barking dog. Ten minutes before that, a barred owl’s cackle.