A knife-thin moon fades into the dawn sky. The only cloud huddles in the bottom corner of the meadow, where a phoebe is calling.
moon
September 14, 2025
Mounds of white snakeroot in the yard glow dimly in the light of a half moon. Orion gets one leg over the ridge before he starts to fade, and the soft calls of migrant thrushes fill the trees.
September 10, 2025
Canada geese, a screech owl, some crows, and the inevitable wren sing in the sunrise, the western ridge turning red under a flat-tire moon.
September 8, 2025
Cold, clear, and still at sunrise, with little sign of the more than two million birds who streamed overhead during the moonlit hours aside from a few soft, scattered chirps.
August 15, 2025
Half a moon alone in the sky. A silent catbird flies into the half-dead lilac. Off through the forest, blinding fragments of the sun.
August 11, 2025
Sunrise reddens the western ridge as the flat-tire moon fades, alone in the sky. Jewelweed flowers along the stream nod and sway as the first hummingbird makes her rounds.
August 9, 2025
Clear and cold at dawn. The nearly full moon gutters among the trees. A screech owl trills with a rising intonation, which feels like some kind of omen.
July 21, 2025
Cool and clear at sunrise, with a sliver of moon like an open parenthesis for something left unsaid. A hummingbird drawn in by purple bergamot sips from the drab white soapwort instead.
July 20, 2025
A crescent moon above the ridge at dawn is lost in fog by sunrise. A hummingbird bothers the bergamot, and a wood thrush is singing as lustily as if it were still June.
July 10, 2025
Up for moonset and sunrise—both hidden by clouds. The dark yard, punctuated by the apostrophes of top-heading garlic, has a crow for a rooster.
April 17, 2025
Clear and still with frost in the yard and the gibbous moon caught in the treetops like a deflated balloon. A brown creeper sprials up a walnut tree. The sun comes up.
March 25, 2025
Dawn. A last glimpse of the moon through the clouds as the torrent of robin song is joined by a cardinal, a phoebe, the wren.
March 23, 2025
Clear, cold, and quiet. The rising moon gleams like a scimitar as it passes behind the big tulip tree, and emerges five minutes later as pale as a grub.
March 18, 2025
A degree or two below freezing at dawn. The flat-tire moon fades into obscurity in the middle of a cloudless sky. The ridge turns red.