Tundra swans at sunrise—their ethereal flutes, their shining white forms—are trailed by a local Canada goose and the crescent moon.
moon
The crescent moon behind the trees gives the newfallen snow an antique cast. It’s very cold. A distant train is the only other moving thing.
Walking naked through the cold house at dawn, I’m startled by a bright light among the trees on the western ridge: the moon, big as a banjo.
By dawn, the clear sky has given way to white, as if the full moon spilled over. If the clouds were a true cover, they’d trap more heat!
For a half-hour after moonset, the sky is perfectly empty, the ground is still white. Then through the bare trees, this blemish of a sun.
A patch of silver in the yard: first frost. A jet glints in the rising sun, its short contrail twice as bright as the crescent moon.
Dawn fog lifts and pauses, so it’s clear to a height of ten feet, then white, then the crescent moon. A red-bellied woodpecker’s slow chant.
Just before dawn, the creak of a tree in the woods, and then in the yard. A bindweed in the garden aims its white blunderbuss at the moon.