Clear and still. A squirrel crouched in the lowest crotch of the closest black walnut tree works on her breakfast walnut, tail arched back into a headdress as spiky as the rising sun that sets it aglow.
sunrise
Thaw. The snowpack has shrunk by about half, and the snowplowed banks that flank the road have opened their dark dirt hearts. The gray sky turns faintly pink as the wind picks up.
Cold not as deep as predicted due to a lid of cloud, which eases open in the east—just enough for the sun to flood the western ridge with light. The warble of a house finch.
Sunrise sky like an illuminated manuscript: that blue, that gold leaf. The red squirrel pokes its head out of its hole in the black locust behind the spinghouse to give everything a resounding scold.
Deep cold. Somewhere up on the ridge, an oak’s icy heartwood goes off like a gun. Ten minutes before sunrise, the eastern sky turns blood-red. A Carolina wren offers the briefest of commentaries.
Cold, windy, and mostly clear for the hour between sunrise and the actual appearance of the sun. Wriggling my fingers for warmth, I watch a small cloud acquiring a glow as it sails off east.
Blue sky, orange clouds, and the temperature so far below freezing, the slightest breeze turns my cheeks numb. After a while I notice the complete absence of squirrels.
A wedge of blue sky opens at sunrise. Four pileated woodpeckers in the hollow take turns drumming, two low, two high. Half an hour later, it’s gray and quiet.
Sunrise. A spirited argument breaks out between a raven and some crows as the sky’s ephemeral pagentry fades to gray.
A wedge of yellow light in the clouds for half an hour past sunrise. I’m learning to spot when a squirrel is about to dig up a nut: it stares off into space in one last effort to convince any watcher that it’s doing something entirely different.
A hole in the clouds at dawn fails to hold the whole full moon—a brief, bright searchlight. Later, at sunrise, a chorus of chiselers as gray squirrels work on their black walnuts.
A fresh inch and a half of dry snow, and the bitter wind that bore it now ushering a flotilla of orange clouds across a sky of startling blue. From my mother’s house, the murmur of voices on the radio like a distant surf, accompanied not by the cries of gulls but the chatter of house finches.
Cold, quiet, and mostly clear for the solstice. Small clouds turn blood-red at dawn, fade to yellow, then turn a lurid orange at sunrise. A red squirrel pauses at the edge of the porch to glare at me.
A cloudless sunrise. The ground is once again white, after yesterday’s snow squalls, and it’s very still. When the wren stops singing, I can hear a low gurgle from the spring.