After rain in the small hours, a clearing wind at dawn. Winter wren song issues from a hole in the road bank—a quiet torrent.
dawn
October 30, 2024
Dawn. High in a red oak crown an acorn lets go, tapping the branches on its way down like a blind man’s cane.
October 29, 2024
With no inversion layer, the early-morning traffic noise keeps its distance, like the worn-down moon cradling its heart of darkness. My rumbling stomach is the loudest thing.
October 28, 2024
Red dawn spreading like a wine spill from a small patch of burgundy near the moon, which I watch with head held still to see it inch from twig to twig. A white-throated sparrow is the first to sing.
October 27, 2024
Sunday silence. The moon tangled in the treetops glimmers under a heavy eyelid. A train plays rooster for the dawn.
October 24, 2024
Clear at dawn. A pileated woodpecker rockets silently through the thinning forest canopy, and lands on the side of an oak like the angel of death for carpenter ants, elegant black-and-white wings folding shut.
October 19, 2024
In the frosty stillness, I watch moonlight disappear into dawnlight. Half an hour before sunrise, an acorn falls with a thud and all the sparrows begin twittering.
October 18, 2024
Dawn light with sparrow song. The full moon of my insomnia still glows above the western ridge as blood dries on the mousetrap under the stairs.
October 7, 2024
Breezy and cool at dawn. Migrants trade notes as they explore the forest edge: towhee, phoebe, thrush. A lost passenger jet comes roaring overhead.
October 2, 2024
Another dark, rainy dawn. I can’t stop thinking of my last dream before waking, in which I had died and reincarnated as a deer. I had so many legs, and everything was delicious!
September 28, 2024
Before daybreak, the crooning and snarling of raccoons up in the woods. In the silent aftermath, something large and dead crashes down.
September 23, 2024
Drizzle before dawn, settling into steady rain by daybreak. At the woods’ edge, two chirps from a towhee and the soft call of a migrant thrush.
September 13, 2024
6:24. The cardinal sings a few times and falls silent. 6:26. The whippoorwill calls a few times and falls silent. 6:29. The Carolina wren starts up.
September 9, 2024
A cold and cloudy dawn. The thump and clatter of hooves, deer crashing through the underbrush—hounded not by a predator but the first stirrings of rut. A migrant thrush’s soft call.