Cold and still. A sky etched with faintly pink contrails. The song sparrows sing in fragments, while the white-throated sparrows merely chirp.
jet
Cold and still at dawn, with pink clouds emerging from the engines of a jet. A white-throated sparrow pipes up. Something on four feet runs off through the deepening leaf duff.
Clear and cool at sunrise. In the holiday-morning silence, a worm-eating warbler’s dry rattle in the woods accompanies the catbird singing in the yard and field sparrows in the meadow. A crow. The rumble of a jet.
Breezy and cool at dawn. Migrants trade notes as they explore the forest edge: towhee, phoebe, thrush. A lost passenger jet comes roaring overhead.
High drama in the trees behind the springhouse, where a red squirrel contends with the local grays. A jet with no contrail slips like a needle through the blue, its roar trailing far behind.
Deep cold. The sound of wind mingling with the dull howl of distant jets. Two dead leaves pick this moment to finally let go and twirl up through their small oak into the clouds.
Dawn: the red thread of a contrail fraying as it fades. Fog rises from the goldenrod, erasing the faint dot that must’ve been Mercury.
A lull in the morning chorus. Contrails of all ages litter the sky like a boneyard. A woodpecker’s fast rattle.
Coyotes yipping up on the ridge before dawn. I try to guess the weather based a jet’s contrail—not too long—in the faint light of a crescent moon.
Half a moon slowly floating to the top of the tall tulip poplar. The lights of a jet with its roar a quarter of the sky behind.
Mercury rises just as the stars begin to fade. A jet flies under it. A lone goose flies over it. I look away and lose it in the dawn sky.
Cold, but with eddies of warmer air as the sun rises through the trees. It’s clear except for three mare’s tails—remnants of dawn contrails.
Humidity thick as wool. Above the buzz of hummingbird dogfights, a distant roar of military jets, hopefully just on training runs.
Humidity thick as wool. Above the buzz of hummingbird dogfights, a distant roar of military jets, hopefully just on training runs.