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.
moon
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.
Sunday silence. The moon tangled in the treetops glimmers under a heavy eyelid. A train plays rooster for the dawn.
Before dawn, a moon with toothmarks. The tick tock of an acorn dropped by a flying squirrel.
Orange light seeps down the western ridge. The half moon high overhead has been abandoned by its entourage of stars. A crow sits in a newly bare walnut tree, yelling.
Wind rustling through fallen leaves in the moonlight. When it stops, I can hear the careful footsteps of a deer.
In the frosty stillness, I watch moonlight disappear into dawnlight. Half an hour before sunrise, an acorn falls with a thud and all the sparrows begin twittering.
Dawn light with sparrow song. The full moon of my insomnia still glows above the western ridge as blood dries on the mousetrap under the stairs.
Warm and humid, with a sickle moon high overhead. I battle mosquitos in between reading about eastern equine encephalitis on my phone.
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.
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.