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.
moon
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.
A few degrees above freezing and very still. The full moon hangs above the western ridge, fresh from its run-in with the earth’s shadow, glowing yellow.
Clear at dawn, with the bright crescent moon inching teeth-first through the treetops. A mourning dove plays a downbeat rooster.
Out before dawn. The roofline’s lone icicle glitters in the light of a moon grown thin and sharp. Out of the corner of my eye, a slight movement in the shadows that might or might not be a weasel.
A half moon all alone in thin clouds like a lost knife. The plank wall of the house behind me pops from the cold.
A fresh scurf of snow on the porch. The trees with their moon-shadows stretching east like dark carpets rolled out for the rumored sun. All the old aches in my body. It’s cold.
The deep cold has returned, bringing silence and a bitter wind. The just-past-full moon slips behind a cloud in the west and never returns. From under the house, the sound of gnawing.
Bitter cold this solstice morning, with the half moon moving in and out of clouds—the trees with their shadows, and then just shadow.
Sunrise past, thin clouds spread across the sky as if leaking from the flat-tire moon. The pileated woodpeckers are loud with what sounds like antagonism but could simply be joy.
Moonlight at dawn, only to cloud over by sunrise. A pileated woodpecker flies in a tight circle among the trees, as if lost, before launching himself out into the yard.
A slightly flat full moon in the west at dawn. A towhee calls from the dark edge of the woods. Freight trains labor up the valley. Just before full daylight, a screech owl begins to trill.
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.
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.