5:15. The crescent moon’s parenthesis gapes at Pleiades, which I watch until it’s subsumed into the dawn.
moon
July 26, 2021
5:15. The moon through thin clouds. A whip-poor-will’s distant chant. 9:15. The sun through thin clouds. A hummingbird’s mid-air defecation.
May 28, 2021
Dawn stealing influence from the just-past-full moon. The whip-poor-will awakening the catbird.
March 6, 2021
Fourth-quarter moon just above the trees. The dawn chorus begins with a mourning dove. Then Carolina wren, crows, a red-winged blackbird.
March 4, 2021
Just below freezing. The infrequent sun is in the same spot among the trees as the moon last night, when I sat outside listening to swans.
March 2, 2021
An hour before sunrise, the bitter wind says winter but the creek says spring. The moon’s gone flat, but is still as bright as a false dawn.
February 6, 2021
Sunrise and the clouds turn pink as the waning crescent moon turns pale. A squirrel way up in the woods begins its trek to the bird feeder.
December 8, 2020
Bright sun, icy breeze. A few flakes zoom past. The only cloud is tiny and dissolves as I watch, leaving the sky to the fourth-quarter moon.
October 6, 2020
Clear and still. I search the glowing trees for last night’s shapes in the moonlight: the monstrous puma, the opossum playing at death.
October 1, 2018
A half moon high overhead, fading as the fog rises off the meadow. A nuthatch lands on the dead elm’s smooth trunk and turns all about.
October 10, 2017
Before dawn, the half moon’s flat edge passing through different types of clouds like a cheese knife. The neighbor’s rooster starts to crow.
April 11, 2017
Red maple trees blossom on their own schedules. The branches I watched the moon slip through like a slow fish last night are now ablaze.
November 19, 2016
The loud rasp of squirrel teeth trying to gain entry to the chambers of a black walnut. Gibbous moon like an eggshell discarded in the sky.
September 22, 2016
Clear and cold at sunrise. A migrant thrush calls from the not-yet-ruined temple of the trees. Overhead, the archaic smile of the moon.