A half moon hangs overhead, its light lost to the dawn. A bat makes one last circuit of the yard, where the white tops of snakeroot are beginning to show.
moon
Sun in the treetops. I try to re-find the half moon—nothing but goldfinches.
Dawn: a blurry moon just above the trees losing its glow. The wood thrush’s ethereal song gives way to a red-eyed vireo sounding like a wind-up bird, going at twice normal speed.
The sun rose while I was watching the moon. Now there’s a black-throated blue warbler at the woods’ edge whispering its three-syllable song.
Night and day overlap as the moon rises through the trees, serenaded by a family of barred owls, while the first song sparrow and cardinal herald the dawn. Then the whip-poor-will begins to shriek.
Out before dawn, I find moonlight in my chair. A song sparrow sings one phrase, possibly without waking up. A quiet trickle from the spring.
Red sunrise. To the south, the moon has gone flat on one side so it resembles a giant ear for the first crow to yell into when it created the world. The chanting phoebe clearly has no inkling.
Clear and cold as the moon’s searchlight sinks through ridgetop trees. Dawn stains the east. The cardinal wakes up, full of cheer.
Swans before dawn, their moonlit cries drifting down from over the north end of the mountain. A quiet trickle from the stream. The scent of thawed earth.
Red dawn with a moon like a searchlight sinking into the powerline cut. The cardinal debuts a new call with what sounds like a glottal stop in the middle: chee-er, chee-er.
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.
Dawnish. Wind makes the big dial thermometer squeak and shiver. A flat-tire moon goes in and out of fast-moving clouds.
One last glimpse of the crescent moon before it’s swallowed by clouds. The typewriter sound of squirrel claws on bark, chasing. It’s cold.
Overcast and quiet before dawn. A half-inch of fresh snow sticks to everything, glowing faintly in the light of a hidden moon.