Cool and clear. Sunlight floods the crown of the tall tulip tree, which releases one yellow leaf into the still air, rocking from side to side as it falls.
sunrise
July 21, 2025
Cool and clear at sunrise, with a sliver of moon like an open parenthesis for something left unsaid. A hummingbird drawn in by purple bergamot sips from the drab white soapwort instead.
July 20, 2025
A crescent moon above the ridge at dawn is lost in fog by sunrise. A hummingbird bothers the bergamot, and a wood thrush is singing as lustily as if it were still June.
July 17, 2025
Overcast at sunrise. Each breeze brings a brief shower from a midnight storm. A mosquito wallows in the long hair of my forearm.
July 12, 2025
Out before sunrise, where the humidity has become visible: a thin fog through which I swim, leaving the porch for an early-morning hike to beat the heat.
July 11, 2025
Cool, clear and humid at sunrise. I watch a crow family waking up on their roost in an oak, the fledglings softly begging from the adults, who stretch and scratch.
July 10, 2025
Up for moonset and sunrise—both hidden by clouds. The dark yard, punctuated by the apostrophes of top-heading garlic, has a crow for a rooster.
June 25, 2025
Out before sunrise to catch the coolness, I rub a jewelweed poulice against a small poison ivy rash on my middle finger, feeling the itch subside and contemplating the yard, where poison ivy and jewelweed freely intermingle.
June 23, 2025
Clear at sunrise with an eyelash moon and a deer grazing just inside the woods’ edge. A Cooper’s hawk calls from atop the tallest black locust and flies off to the east.
June 11, 2025
Cool and mostly clear at sunrise. A goldfinch chirping in pentameter. The cerulean warbler changes trees—a blue-striped blur.
June 6, 2025
Sunrise hidden by fog, but already there’s a background buzz of periodical cicadas. A cerulean warbler sings at the woods’ edge, as usual, long after the wood thrush has lapsed into silence.
June 3, 2025
A lurid sun glimmers through high-altitude haze. Somewhere in the deep grass a hen turkey calls to her poults, as goldfinches party it up in the treetops.
May 11, 2025
A few clouds at sunrise. Goldfinches chatter over the rap battles of ovenbirds and vireos. Bracken leaves are still opening in the yard—feathers on feathers.
May 6, 2025
Foggy at sunrise. A turkey gobbles non-stop from up in the field, and the woods ring with vireos and ovenbirds. At the edge of the porch, a gray squirrel nuzzles her almost-grown offspring.