It’s still mostly dark when the first faint pink spot appears in the clouds: day advancing like a disease, slow and red. A raven croaks.
dawn
Drifts of white on the springhouse roof: not fallen blossoms, but last night’s pellet snow. Tree creaks join the dawn chorus.
Shirtsleeves at dawn. I rub my eyes at the new blossom-clouds, at green fogs of leaves. It’s too sudden, a premature ejaculation of spring.
Dawn. The Cooper’s hawk is back, his kak-kak-kak echoing off the icy snow. I scan the trees, a haystack of branches, for that fierce needle.