Moon above, mist below, and the treetops shot with sun. Jays call back and forth, acorns filling the pouches in their throats.
moon
Sitting by the front door to enjoy the moon, I’m startled by a rabbit running between my feet in her eagerness to graze. Five minutes later she runs back to evade a weasel loping down the road. Orion emerges from the trees.
A moon gone slightly flat hangs in the big walnut trees over my mother’s house, which periodically release their ordnance onto the roof with a bang.
The old moon is now mostly ember, clasped by a thin crescent no brighter than nearby Venus. The loud highway noise from the west that portends nice weather.
Just at the point where the half-moon loses its share of the shadows, a migrant thrush calls from the woods’ edge: a few soft notes, then silence. The sky turns pink.
The full moon sits on the horizon, serenaded by cold crickets. Overhead, the Pleiades wink out one by one, leaving Jupiter alone in the crown of a locust.
Before the first birds, a thin, gaping moon. A last katydid stopping mid-creak. The whine of tires on the highway over the ridge.
An orange moon gone slightly flat hangs in the southwest at dawn. An eight-point buck grazes under the old lilac.
A turkey hunter’s pickup rumbles past. The moon pale as a glowworm glimmers in the treetops as a whippoorwill clears his throat.
First morning back after vacation, the setting moon is somehow already full. A fox sparrow sings beside the old springhouse. Up in the woods, the first blue-headed vireo tunes up.
Back with the old bank, Daylight Savings and Loan. A fuzzy gibbous moon. Something stirring in the juniper and going back to sleep.
Crystal clear and quiet from moonset to sunrise and beyond. The sine wave of a pileated woodpecker’s flight through the trees, each widely spaced flap propelling it upward.
Moon low in the west, as bright as a searchlight. Two silent crows fly over the house. The clouds’ bellies begin to glow.
Twenty minutes till sunrise, the half moon’s fuzzy ear. A mourning dove starts to call, taking a few tries to get the right notes.