Foggy at dawn with sound out of the east—the quarry instead of the interstate. Gray-green lichens glow on the rain-darkened trunks of sweet birches all along the edge of the woods.
dawn
Through two hats and a hood, the wind’s bitter whisper reaches my ear. Odd moans and creaking sounds issue from the trees, whose dark silhouettes stretch between two absences. Then first light and the cooing of doves.
Impossible to distinguish the sound of the ridgetop wind from the rumble of freight trains below. The stars fade. A small high cloud turns pink.
Overcast and quiet an hour before dawn. From the spruce grove a half mile away, a barred owl’s single Who. The stench of diesel.
Dawn clouds stacked liked a ladder of blood. Chattering nuthatches. A dove’s breathy song sounds far from mournful.
Cold and still all the way to the stars, which are just beginning to fade. A barred owl calls once. The hesitant footfalls of a deer coming down to drink.
A song sparrow singing at first light as if it were March already. A quiet trickle from the spring. The moon gapes through the treetops, pale and hollowed out.
Cold and still. Just as the half-moon‘s light begins to fade, a screech owl trills from the pines, as if to prolong the night.
Fog blurs the difference between the white below and above, the trees reduced to gray wraiths as a Carolina wren sings for the break of day.
First light. White lines crisscross the dark edge of the woods: snow on trees. I stick my hand out to feel it falling, flakes as fine as dust melting into my palm.
Snow at first light—a silent mob of moving shadows, pecks on my cheek—then as dawn approaches, the slow differentiation of black and swirling white.
Overcast at dawn. A cold kiss—snowflakes in the air. When the sunrise comes, it’s only evident in the caws of crows.
Silhouetted against the dawn sky, a squirrel forages for birch seeds right where Venus was last seen, glimmering through thin clouds.
Waiting for dawn, I scan the holes in the clouds for meteors. The north side of the springhouse roof still wears a small blanket of snow—more like a thin sheet. Any small beast sleeping in the springhouse attic must be cold.